


And Behind This Door...

by indysaur



Category: CW Network RPF, Monsters Inc (2001)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-04-15
Updated: 2012-04-14
Packaged: 2017-11-03 16:25:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 21,123
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/383502
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/indysaur/pseuds/indysaur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A love story based on Pixar's Monsters Inc., in which, as the inestimable Spice Girls would put it, two become one.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Jensen's POV

> _Well, we talked like that for awhile and then I said to him, I said, "You have the advantage on me. You know my name and I don't know yours." And, and right back at me he said, "What name do you like?" Well, I didn't even have to think twice about that. Harvey's always been my favorite name. So I said to him, I said, "Harvey." And, uh, this is the interesting thing about the whole thing: He said, "What a coincidence. My name happens to be Harvey._
> 
> Elwood P. Dowd, Harvey

  
  
The first time they meet, Jared says, "You just stumbled out of the closet."  
  
"Ah," Jensen says. "A statement applicable both literally and figuratively."  
  
"What the hell is going on?" Jared slaps on his bedside lamp, pulls his comforter up high over his bare chest.  
  
"Boo?" Jensen tries.  
  
Jared stares.  
  
"Yeah, that was probably a longshot."  
  
"Are you going to rob me?" Jared demands.  
  
"No, no. The key word here is 'scare'."  
  
"I'm scared," Jared says immediately.  
  
Jensen tilts his head. "A scream just for proof?"  
  
Jared gapes. He squeezes his eyes closed. "This," he says, "is not actually the weirdest dream I've ever had."  
  
****  
  
It figures that Jensen would get stuck with a dud. It's the story of his life. He's disaster-prone, Mike says. A judgment made worse because it’d come from a green eyeball on legs who'd never let an opportunity for a pratfall slide. But Sully was clear that he wanted management to know how the job was done, so here Jensen was, making the best of a bad situation. He's learned to get good at that.  
  
Anyway, pretending the whole thing is a dream gets Jared to calm down some. Enough to start asking questions. "So you collect the energy from kids' screams to fuel your world?"  
  
"Lightbulbs, Kindles, electric foot warmers, all powered by that adrenaline rush of fear."  
  
"Twisted," Jared says.  
  
"Recycling!" Jensen replies. "Effective use of what may be considered a waste product!"  
  
"Two things." Jared counts them off on his fingers. "I'm seventeen. And you're not a monster."  
  
Jensen raises both arms above his head, wiggles the lower half of his jaw. "I'm a bundle of youthful angst and hormones compounded by sexual confusion. Mikey considers me his crowning achievement." He lowers his arms, squints at Jared. "You're scrawny for seventeen."  
  
"Thank you," Jared says. "My fear has now completely given way to annoyance and indignation."  
  
"Ugh," Jensen says. "Useless."  
  
****  
  
The second time, Jensen just kicks open the door, strolls inside Jared's bedroom and drops onto his bed.  
  
Jared groans, blearily opens one eye.  
  
"It's me," Jensen says. "Jensen." He grins, snapping his teeth together.  
  
"God," Jared says. "I was really hoping this wasn't going to be a recurring nightmare."  
  
"Guess what," Jensen says, "I'm having an identity crisis."  
  
"That's super great." Jared yawns. "I bet it'll provide a lot of fodder for your future memoirs."  
  
"That's what I like about you," Jensen says. "You always look on the bright side."  
  
"You don't actually know me."  
  
"Sure I do." Jensen lies across the width of the bed, Jared's knobby knees digging into his spine. "I'm not a monster," he says, tone bright as the glint off high noon sun. "I'm just an orphaned kid Sully couldn't leave behind."  
  
Jared hasn't turned on the light. It sounds like it's raining outside, a steady patter on the roof, like distant drumming. The room's warm, just this side of stuffy. Jensen blinks slowly at the ceiling.  
  
"Did you hear me?" Jensen asks.  
  
"Yeah," Jared says. He throws a corner of his comforter over Jensen's face.  
  
"Are you going to say something bright-sided?"  
  
Jared sighs. "No." He pats Jensen's shoulder twice with his big hand. "That blows."  
  
Jensen sucks in a slow breath, lets the smile he'd grafted onto his face fade. "Yeah," he exhales in a whoosh. He feels a wobble in his chest, all his anchors cut from their chains. "I wonder what happened to my folks."  
  
Jared turns a little in his bed, the mattress dipping. "Whatever it was, they were probably really sad to lose you." His voice is warm and dark. "I bet they didn't want to be away."  
  
Jensen nods from under his portion of comforter. He puts his hands palm-down on the bed, riding out the little ripples Jared makes as he shifts.  
  
"You're not a figment of my imagination, are you?" Jared asks.  
  
****  
  
The next time, Jared is wide awake. He has this monstrous TV in his room. It's demonstrably and emphatically not a flatscreen. It looks a million years old. He's playing Modern Warfare on it.  
  
"Where did that thing come from?" Jensen asks. "The Stone Age?"  
  
"Unlikely," Jared says. "But I appreciate your attempt at dramatic effect."  
  
"It looks like something Fred Flintstone would buy with his end-of-the-year bonus."  
  
Jared pauses his game, puts down his controller. "So are you just going to pop into my bedroom randomly for the rest of my life?"  
  
"We're friends," Jensen says.  
  
Jared narrows his eyes. "I could be doing stuff in here."  
  
"Like what?"  
  
"Private stuff."  
  
Jensen laughs. "You're kind of uptight."  
  
Jared stands; he's a lot taller than Jensen had expected. "I'm not uptight, I'm territorial. This is my room. It's my domain."  
  
Jensen holds his hands up. "Alright, alright. I'll knock, how 'bout."  
  
Jared sighs. "And if I need my sleep, you have to leave. Or be quiet."  
  
"Silently watching you slumber?"  
  
Jared grimaces. "Okay, if I require sleep, you will exit the premises."  
  
"Well, we'll figure out all the details a little later." Jensen grabs Jared's game controller. "Find some wiggle room where it's called for."  
  
Jared crosses his arms over his chest, chewing on his lower lip. "This doesn't seem like it's on the up and up," he says. "Are you allowed to just hang out with me?"  
  
"Not technically." Jensen's got his guy stuck in a corner and there's a lot of shooting happening. He's not sure where, exactly, the gunfire is coming from, so he just kind of fires off into the air, hoping for the best. "But I'm guilt-tripping Sully pretty hard, and he's a marshmallow to begin with. How he became the company's executive-in-chief I'll never know."  
  
"What if I tell everyone all the sordid details you've shared with me? It's a secret, right?"  
  
Jensen looks up from the game. "You won't," he says.  
  
Jared holds Jensen's gaze. He chews at his cheek before sighing. "Give me that," he says, snatching the controller from Jensen's hands. He easily extricates the marine from the corner of the bunker Jensen had rammed him into, then tosses the reins back to Jensen.  
  
"Look at that," Jensen says. He nods at Jared's Muppets t-shirt. "Nice pj's."  
  
"Mm," Jared says. "Kermit’s an institution." He points at the top left corner of the screen. "Throw the grenade back already!" He shakes his head. "Sloppy."  
  
****  
  
Jensen does some poking around back at headquarters. Jared's door was supposed to be sealed off and sequestered a long time ago--right around the time he left elementary school--but it got mixed up into the active doors somehow. Jensen tuts as he goes through the files. That's the problem with big corporations--it's hard to lay culpability at any one person's feet, what with the trail of little oversights that leads to every major error.  
  
"It's a good thing I caught this one," he tells Jared. "Who knows what would have happened if I hadn't gotten your door thrown my way."  
  
"I have a question," Jared says. "Why do you stay over there? You're not a monster, despite the convincing argument your face puts up. Just hop over here full-time."  
  
"Hello," Jensen says. "Did you not hear what I just said? I am putting out fires all over Monstropolis."  
  
Jared rolls his eyes.  
  
"Holy smokes," Jensen says.  
  
****  
  
Jensen's already crossing over more than he should anyway. There are a lot of eyes on him; one especially large eye in particular seems to be concentrated on his back at all times. Jensen has never been more grateful for the fact that Mike is easily flustered. A few drops of hot sauce in Guido's morning coffee has him belching fire, and the drill in Mike's department is enough to put Jensen in the clear for weeks, what with the paperwork involved in follow-up.  
  
"I have to start being careful," he tells Jared. "I think they're beginning to suspect."  
  
Jared is doing pull-ups on the bar he'd hooked over the closet door. "Well," he grunts, "a fire drill, flood, and bomb threat in the span of three months doesn't really scream normal working conditions."  
  
"Says you." Jensen scrolls through Jared's phone, snooping through his text messages. "And besides, I still don't think bomb threat is the appropriate term."  
  
"We agreed to disagree, Jensen."  
  
Jensen rolls his eyes, tosses Jared's phone aside. He watches Jared’s back strain. "How many of those can you do?"  
  
Jared blows out an exhale. "This is eight."  
  
"You're putting a little more meat on your bones, I guess."  
  
Jared pulls his chin up above the bar, holds steady. If he straightened his legs, he could still press his feet flat to the floor, easy.  
  
"Have you thought that through?" Jensen asks. "At least before I had the reassurance of knowing you wouldn't immediately be singled out for consumption if I ever dragged you into Little Hades."  
  
Jared snorts, slowly lowers himself until his elbows are extended.  
  
Jared's being incredibly boring, and his devotion to the bulking up of his body is near inexplicable. "Dude, do you have a girlfriend?" Jensen demands. He's already certain halfway through the question. "I can't believe you're holding out on me."  
  
"I don't."  
  
"You do!" Jensen says. "Say it. Say you have a girlfriend."  
  
Jared drops to the ground, turns around. He's blushing as he stretches his arms behind his back. "No, I don't have a girlfriend. Don't twist yourself up into a knot."  
  
Jensen shrugs, drops back onto the bed. "I was momentarily electrified by curiosity and shock."  
  
"Settle back. All is as it should be." Jared falls face-first onto the bed next to Jensen, too fast for Jensen to get a good look at the expression that flickers across his face.  
  
Jensen pinches Jared's wifebeater with two fingers, peels the wet cotton off the small of Jared's back, takes a kind of sick pleasure in it. He's not sure if there was a twinge in Jared's voice just then, a little bit of humiliation at Jensen's disbelief that Jared could land a girl. "Hey," he says, finally. "I mean. I think anyone would be lucky to have you."  
  
"Mm," Jared says into his pillow.  
  
"I'm serious."  
  
Jared grunts.  
  
"Hey," Jensen says. He puts his hand on Jared's shoulder, pats him awkwardly. He squeezes. "I'm serious."  
  
Jared rolls up onto one side, looks over at Jensen. He holds Jensen's gaze, chews thoughtfully on the inside of his cheek. "Okay," he says. "That's really sweet of you."  
  
Jensen rolls his eyes, flips him off.  
  
"Jensen, no. You're the sweetest," Jared says, smirking. "I'm serious."  
  
****  
  
So it turns out that Jared is on the water polo team, and they're getting further along into the season than anyone thought they would. "It's not just water polo," he tells Jensen. "It's varsity water polo."  
  
"You are sleeping all the time," Jensen says. "I think there's something wrong with your thyroid."  
  
"My thyroid is top notch, okay?" Jared yawns. "Coach is making me bulk up on top of practice, which is on top of debate team, which is on top of pounding out my college applications."  
  
"Okay, well, get a new video game. Because I've smashed all your records, and there's nothing left for me to achieve here. I've attained, just," Jensen lifts a hand, "the pinnacle of my current being."  
  
Jared groans. He puts his face down into the open textbook on his desk. "You're cramping my style," he says.  
  
Jensen slaps Jared on the back. "Chin up. Would it be extremely helpful if I read this book aloud to you? 'Section 1.1: Four ways to represent a function--'"  
  
"Oh my god," Jared groans. "I'm doomed. I'm done for."  
  
Jensen laughs. "Come on, Jared. Relax. You can do this. I promise, I'll be quiet. I'll leave, if you need."  
  
Jared turns his head, one cheek pressed to text. "I think I took on too much. I should probably drop this math class."  
  
Jensen squeezes Jared's shoulder. "I think you can do it."  
  
"Says the guy who lives in my closet."  
  
Jensen smiles. "Says the guy who lives in your closet."  
  
****  
  
Jensen usually gets bored pretty fast. Monstropolis is sensory overkill, and Jensen got used to being assaulted with new things to see, or touch, or hear. It's a big city, and home to a massive industry, and there are, inevitably, monsters who take their jobs home with them, which leads to screaming, and roaring, and the occasional city rampage. It's not violent, really, mostly just a way to let off some steam.  
  
"There's kind of an art to it," Jensen tells Jared. "Cutting swaths across municipal buildings."  
  
"Taking graffiti up a step too far, don't you think?"  
  
"Do I criticize cultural aspects of your society, Jared?" Jensen asks. "I don't think I do. Because I'm respectful."  
  
"Oh my god," Jared says. He sits on his bed, leaning over to grab his calves. "I'm sore like you wouldn't believe."  
  
Jensen sighs, drops into Jared's desk chair and wheels it over. "Did you stretch before you worked out?" he asks.  
  
"Yes," Jared says. "A little."  
  
Jensen raises an eyebrow.  
  
"I touched my toes," Jared says. "I thought I was good to go."  
  
Jensen leans back in his chair, spins away. "Go take a warm bath, Jay. You need to soak. I'll see you another night."  
  
Jared kicks out a leg to catch Jensen's chair, groans immediately following. "Wait," he says, still wincing. "You're going to leave?"  
  
Jensen thumbs at his nose. "Yeah. You need your rest, superstar. Besides, I do have duties to attend to. I'm pretty important."  
  
"Come back Friday night. I've got a big game I can tell you about."  
  
"Okay," Jensen says, hands gripping the rounded curves of the armrests. He puts one foot under his thigh. "I wish I could go," he says.  
  
"What's stopping you?" Jared asks.  
  
Jensen smiles. "Monsters have a curfew. Unless you're planning on playing around midnight, I think this is a match I'll have to miss."  
  
Jared closes one eye, studying Jensen. "Do you like hanging out in here? I don't--it's not a huge room."  
  
"Hm," Jensen says. He takes in the four walls, the framed jerseys, trophies and photos strewn across shelves. The overflowing hamper, the yellow light of bare lightbulbs, the Thomas the Train Engine sheets stretched threadbare over the too-small bed. He shrugs. "I wouldn't come back if I didn't."  
  
Jared runs a finger across the end of one eyebrow, smiles to himself.  
  
****  
  
Jensen shows up Friday night, but the room's empty. He waits around, and at 2 a.m., Jared crawls in through the window. He's weaving. Jensen suspects he's drunk.  
  
"Celebrating?" Jensen asks.  
  
Jared beams. "We crushed them. You should have seen, Jensen. We beyond dominated."  
  
"Never had a doubt," Jensen says. He walks over to Jared, gets his shoulder up under Jared's arm and guides him to the bed. "Sleep it off, champ," he says, tugging the covers up and around Jared.  
  
"Yeah," Jared says, and then he's out.  
  
Jensen goes through the closet door, back to the abandoned training facility where he'd installed Jared's door. He's pretty sure it's reasonably safe here. Sully had been asking about Jared lately, wondering if Jensen was visiting him too often with just enough of an edge that Jensen took warning.  
  
It's not exactly roses in the city but this is the place Jensen grew up. Sully, for all his overprotective tendencies, is family. For every doubt Jensen has had about whether he belongs in Monstropolis, he's found a reason to feel welcome, and wanted.  
  
He wonders if he could leave. He wonders if he could ever really make his life on the other side of that door. He touches it, the familiar white paint, stained wood showing through the places it had worn thin, the pennant hanging on the doorknob. Small tokens of the person it leads to.  
  
****  
  
The next several weeks, every time Jensen drops by, Jared is either already asleep or just gone. The nights Jared is asleep, Jensen lingers, putting the TV on mute while he cycles through a campaign he's played twenty-two times already.  
  
Jared might have been sick one of those nights, and Jensen worried. He touched the fine, sweat-soaked hair at Jared's temples. The kid didn't look too hot, so Jensen snuck down the hallway and wet a washcloth, laid it across Jared's forehead. It's a risk--Jensen keeps freezing at noises coming from the master bedroom down the hall--and Jensen is annoyed that Jared made him take it, so he leaves pretty quick after.  
  
Anyway, Jensen keeps missing Jared, so he tries to make an appointment, once, scrawling a note on a Post-it he sticks to Jared's chin, but when he shows up on the specified date, he finds a note stuck to the TV offering Jared's apologies. There's a dance at school.  
  
Jensen doesn't sulk, at least not for very long. He wanders around the room, poking into drawers, rifling through Jared's backpack. He respects Jared's privacy, usually, but he's not feeling very generous tonight. He picks up a ball cap that's hanging off a nail Jared had pounded into the wall and puts it on.  
  
Jensen imagines, briefly, that Jared went with someone he likes. Someone he goes to school with, that he can share the fullness of his life with, day to night. He sighs, and puts the hat down on Jared's bed, closes the door gently behind him. He'd almost thought the adage wouldn't apply to him, that maybe not every door would outgrow its monster.  
  
It seemed to happen so fast.  
  
****  
  
Sully says that it isn't unheard of, for monsters to form an attachment. Especially now that they've been experimenting with a transition over to laughter--the accidental discovery that it was exponentially more powerful than screams was a revelation. Not a revolution quite yet--they still had technological and institutional hurdles to jump--but they were slowly but surely taking the first steps toward some sort of switch.  
  
They'd expected the possibility that monsters would become more prone to creating bonds with their wards, but they hadn't expected just how quickly and easily those relationships would take root. The comedy routines were more amenable to the forming of friendships, and Imaginary Friends, Ltd. had already lodged a formal complaint and requested a court-ordered injunction on any further encroachment upon their bread-and-butter.  
  
At Sully's request, Jensen had taken on the duties of liaising with IF's legal team. To be completely honest, he understood their concern, and had his own about the pace at which Monsters, Inc. had been reallocating their resources. They needed to slow down and lay tracks for a whole new infrastructure, including some sort of system to monitor Monster-Ward interaction. He'd told Sully that a curriculum needed to be developed, teaching monsters to maintain the illusion of a child's dream or overactive imagination, insuring some distance.  
  
Out of the blue, during another slip into the same sort of lecture over the dinner table, Sully puts a paw over Jensen's hand and asks him about Jared.  
  
Jensen puts on a good front, saying he hasn't seen Jared in almost a year, but Sully quietly tells Jensen that he'd kept track of the traffic on Jared's door. "Did you really think nobody would notice an extra door plugged into our mainframe?"  
  
Jensen sighs. "Caught." He puts his fork down. "But I really haven't visited him in weeks. I learned my lesson." He smiles lightly at Sully. "But see, I'm just as worried about our employees as I am about the kids. They can't stay friends with their wards forever." He laughs. "I don't know if we could afford all the worker's comp for emotional distress."  
  
Sully chews thoughtfully. "It sounds like you're speaking from personal experience," he says.  
  
Jensen shrugs.  
  
"You and Jared had a different story, though, didn't you?"  
  
Jensen laughs. "Well, yeah. He was a teenager. Way less lovable."  
  
****  
  
The truth is, Jensen had needed to quit cold turkey. It had taken him a little while to realize that, human though they both might be, his and Jared's friendship wasn't built to last. Jensen couldn't sacrifice everything else in his life just to hold on to a good buddy. He knew that.  
  
It makes him think of Jared again, though, that conversation.  
  
He asks Mike about the door while they’re walking out of a meeting. If it was still where Jensen had left it.  
  
Mike hustles him into the nearest private space, checks to make sure there are no feet or tentacles or flippers occupying the toilet stalls. He hops up onto the counter, stands so he’s at eye level with Jensen. “Jensen. Buddy. Tell me you’re not thinking about going back to see that A-level chump again.”  
  
Jensen shrugs. “What’s the harm in looking in on him?”  
  
“There’s plenty of harm! Oceans of it! Planets!”  
  
Jensen sets his jaw, turns on the faucet next to Mike, washes his hands.  
  
Mike sighs. He puts a hand on Jensen’s shoulder, tentative, careful with his talons. “Have you said anything to Sully?”  
  
Jensen shakes his head.  
  
Mike looks at Jensen in the mirror, analytical. Seeing all the ways Jensen is different. Jensen remembers that look from when he was just a kid, the way it had used to make him angry. He’d glued fur to his face for months.  
  
It’s easier now to stand it. Mike is honest to a fault, every emotion on his sleeve. Still. “Stop looking at me like that,” Jensen says.  
  
“You know, Sully, he didn’t mean to take you away. He’s never stopped feeling guilty about it; I don’t know what it is, a family thing, probably--the way his grandmother could make you sorry, whoo!” He puts his hands on his hips, a rickety smile under his eye. “But once you were here, Sully went all in. The big galoot always said it was _you_ who chose _him_.”  
  
“Never let it be said that Mike Wazowski couldn’t charm a fourth wish from a genie.” Jensen dries his hands on his pants, swipes them over his ass. “You would like Jared,” he says. “He’d laugh at your jokes.”  
  
“Okay.” Mike throws up his hands. He hops off the counter, looks down to say to his feet, “Jensen, a guy gets used to having you around. I did.” He heads toward the door. “I’ll leave the door active,” he calls over his shoulder, toenails clicking on the tile.  
  
****  
  
Jensen walks down hallways. Their familiarity's faded a little, but he's in front of Jared's door and the red light over it is glowing as usual. He almost knocks.  
  
Jared's awake and bent over his keyboard. His back is broader than Jensen remembers, the sleeves fitting a little tighter.  
  
Jensen had planned on barging in like he used to, collapsing onto Jared's bed and kicking his feet up, but Jared has a new comforter, something in blocks of blue and red, and--the whole room looks different. Older.  
  
Jensen closes the closet door quietly behind him, rocks back on his heels and spreads his arms out wide. "Boo," he says.  
  
Jared jumps up out of his chair, literally spins in the air.  
  
"Whoa," Jensen says. "Agile."  
  
Jared points. "You. You scared the shit out of me."  
  
Jensen can't help but laugh. "I'm sorry," he says.  
  
Jared leans over, bracing his hands on his knees, catching his breath. He shakes his head, then straightens, strides over and crushes Jensen into a hug.  
  
He's a lot taller than Jensen remembers. More expressive, too. This is probably the first time they've ever hugged. "Okay," Jensen says, patting Jared's side.  
  
Jared steps back, but his hands stay on Jensen's shoulders, holding Jensen firmly as he takes a good look. "I was beginning to think I really did make you up."  
  
"You got big," Jensen says.  
  
"I doubted my mental health for a few weeks there."  
  
"Why is your face like that?" Jensen asks.  
  
"Where the hell have you been?"  
  
"You're talking a lot," Jensen says. He doesn't know why he feels so suspicious.  
  
Jared laughs, and Jensen notes the straight whiteness of his teeth, the way his laugh almost booms from some newly discovered reservoir. "You have good timing. It's my birthday."  
  
"Is it?" Jensen asks.  
  
"It is. I'm eighteen now." He drops his hands suddenly, and Jensen can feel the warmth dissipating, too fast.  
  
"Happy birthday!" Jensen says.  
  
"You don't sound like you mean it," Jared says.  
  
"I do." Jensen grins, ignoring the sweet little drop in his stomach. "You're an adult now."  
  
Jared smiles huge. He claps his hands together. "Can you believe it?"  
  
Jensen laughs. "I don't know if the world's ready."  
  
Jared chuckles. He swings his arms back and forth, then finally sits on the bed, tapping the space next to him. "So tell me everything, dude. What've you been up to? Where have you been? Did you meet the three-eyed man of your dreams?"  
  
"You've changed a lot," Jensen says. "In a good way," he adds quickly.  
  
Jared laughs, runs one hand down the front of his shirt, nose wrinkled. "You think?"  
  
"Not just--" Jensen swallows, suddenly nervous. His mouth feels dry. "You seem really happy. Kind of comfortable in your skin, you know?"  
  
Jared smiles. "Thanks. I guess I blossomed. People always said it would happen. I feel good."  
  
Jensen sits down next to Jared. There's barely enough space for the two of them on the edge of the bed. "I'm glad," Jensen says.  
  
Jared nods, waiting for Jensen to pick up the conversation, but Jensen can't seem to get his act together, the room feeling very small, his sweater confining.  
  
He remembers how furiously Jared had been typing when he came in and he looks up at the computer. "You seemed busy when I came in," Jensen says. "Maybe I should get going."  
  
"No, man," Jared says. "It's just homework. It's not even due tomorrow."  
  
"Are you sure?" Jensen asks.  
  
"Definitely." Jared leans over and roots around under the bed, comes up with two video game controllers. "Look who got another controller for his birthday." He waggles his eyebrows.  
  
It's a relief, and Jensen laughs, thankful for the mindless company that Call of Duty allows. He leaves after a round, though, making something up about needing to check in with Roz and the CDA, and it's only after he goes through the door that he feels like he can breathe.  
  
He closes the door behind him, studying his shoes. When he looks up, Sully is standing in front of him, a clipboard in his hands.  
  
"Things are different for you," Sully says. He'd been waiting. "You're lovesick."  
  
****  
  
Which, actually, makes things simpler. The next step after discovering one loves somebody is to then tell that person. Sure, you could kill some time between the two points by conflicted inaction--to tell or not to tell, that is the question--but Jensen's always thought it best, when found in a sea of trouble, to take up arms. It’s the pragmatist in him.  
  
"So, anyway," Jensen wraps up. "I like you."  
  
Jared's sitting up really straight at the foot of his bed.  
  
"In the spirit of full disclosure, there's a possibility it could tip toward love territory. But I'm going to hold onto that word until after I find out whether or not you're going to shut me down." Jensen's pretty anxious. He sounds like he's reading from a Powerpoint presentation, he knows, but he can't really help it.  
  
Jared nods. He scratches the bridge of his nose. "That's big news," he says.  
  
"Yeah," Jensen says. "Take some time, if you need. That's understandable." He rocks back on his heels, chews on his lip.  
  
"I'm kind of--" Jared shakes his head, like he's clearing it of cobwebs. He looks up, smiling ruefully. "I don't even know if I'm gay, Jensen."  
  
"Yeah," Jensen says. "You're a late-bloomer. I think that might be your thing." He looks away decidedly, doing his best not to give Jared the next in what's already been a long series of look-overs.  
  
Jared snorts. "Just tell me I grew up good, already; get all the creepy out of your system."  
  
"Hey," Jensen says. "In my defense, you're at least one growth spurt and fifteen pounds away from the Jared I first met."  
  
Jared sighs, pokes at his bicep. "I'm still the twiggiest guy on my team, you know that?" He pokes it harder. "Grow, damn you, grow."  
  
"Oh, good," Jensen says. "A more important conversation has come along to replace the bullshit we were swapping earlier."  
  
Jared laughs. "It's so nice to be loved," he says.  
  
Jensen doesn't know what to do with his hands. He leans forward. "Is it?" he asks. He wants to know.  
  
****  
  
They talk about it a little longer after that, but Jared seems a little skittish. He still makes Jensen stick around for a few episodes of _It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia_ , but Jensen sneaks out when Jared falls asleep halfway through the last one and once Jensen's back in Monstropolis, he starts to beat himself up.  
  
"Hey," Sully says, pressing the call button for the elevator in the company lobby the next morning, "Don't get stuck inside your head. I've learned it's best not to overthink things."  
  
"Ha," Mike says. "A lesson you unequivocally took to heart. Your head's emptier than the beauty salon floor the day of Celia's annual visit."  
  
"You can't change what you said in that room. Let it be." Sully pats Jensen gently on the shoulder.  
  
Jensen nods, walks into the elevator that just sprang open, jabs at the button for the 13th floor. He lasts until the doors close before blurting out, "I put too much pressure on him, though, right? What happens if he says yes? If he feels the way I do?" He falls against the back wall of the elevator. "I'm serious, what happens next?"  
  
Sully clears his throat, looks away, studying the deepest recesses of the top corners of the elevator box.  
  
Mike taps one foot. "You hold hands? Exchange a smooch or two? The moon, dinner, candlelight." He swoons. "It's the stuff of fairy tales."  
  
Jensen clenches his jaw, staring straight ahead, shaking his head slightly. "I just--I couldn't ask him to come to Monstropolis." He's worried. "Really, the only realistic play is for me to leave here."  
  
Sully makes this small noise in the back of his throat, and it pricks Jensen, lets out all of his air.  
  
"You'd really go?" Mike asks.  
  
"I don't know," Jensen says. "Could I make Jared a reason to leave my whole life behind? He's still a kid."  
  
Sully bumps Jensen's shoulder with his own. "You're still a kid."  
  
The elevator door opens. "Yeah," Jensen says, looking down at his shoes. He steps over.  
  
****  
  
He gives Jared more than a few days to think. Truthfully, it's as much for his own sake as it is Jared's. He hadn't realized how terrifying it might be to get a real, honest-to-god answer. 'No' feels more knowable in a way: If Jared isn't interested, if he just wants to be friends, then the status quo is fine. Jensen will stay in Monstropolis, the city he'd grown up in, and Jared will grow up and go off to college. And maybe Jensen would peek into his room during the holidays, when Jared was home from school; they'd share a few laughs, some egg-nog, and fill each other in on their separate lives. It could be nice.  
  
Jensen spends most of his time worrying about what will happen if Jared says yes. "First off," he tells Roz, "I don't know anything about making a life there. How am I going to get a job? I don't have school records that could transfer over."  
  
"Of course you do," she rasps. "You've been an irrepressible source of paperwork for me since the day you stowed away on Sully's inobservant back."  
  
"Do you actually do paperwork?" Jensen asks.  
  
"I am more of a take action kind of gal," Roz monotones.  
  
Jensen leans on the counter of her station, both elbows planted on the formica. "I don't think I could do it," he says. "Say goodbye to my life here. I've heard the stories about Bigfoot. If there's any truth to it, he's not handling banishment all that well."  
  
"There's a difference between exile and emigration." Roz says. She slithers to the back of her office, files away the last few folders of the day. "About twenty pages of paperwork, for one." She slams the cabinet closed, makes her way back to the service window. "We're not separate worlds, genius. Yetis, closet doors, North Poles. Don't waste your time with maudlin."  
  
Her tone of voice is the polar opposite of sentimental, and it makes Jensen smile. He pokes his head through the window of the Plexiglas partition. "I'd miss you, Roz."  
  
"Ha!" She shoos him back with a flick of her wrist, rasps, "Watch your head," slams the window shut.  
  
****  
  
In the end, Jensen doesn't really make a decision. He just--can't not see Jared any more. He misses him.

  
"So," Jensen says, "the floor workers have been refusing to cease and desist the formation of guilds, even at the company's express orders." He swings his arms back and forth, catches his fist in one hand. "It's just been eating up all my time."  
  
"What you're telling me," Jared says carefully, "is that the long delay between your last visit and this one was caused by the noble cause of suppressing unionization?"  
  
Jensen tuts. "If you think about it, what's good for the company is good for everybody."  
  
Jared leans back in his desk chair, pushing his sweater's hood off his face and leaving his hair disheveled. "I'm not demanding romance, exactly," he says, "but capitalism trumping the question of requited love is a little cold-blooded, don't you think?"  
  
"Is it requited?" Jensen asks. He grips his wrists behind his back, presses against the wall. He's nervous. He wishes he had brought a gift. Some sort of token to sweeten the deal.  
  
Jared sighs, leans forward in his chair, resting his elbows on his knees. "Maybe."  
  
Jensen feels a fluttering in his stomach. The weight of something too heavy to take flight. "Maybe," he repeats.  
  
Jared looks up at Jensen, kind of--demanding Jensen's gaze. He's chewing at his lip. "Is that okay?" he asks, shifting, and all of a sudden, under lamp light, he looks really young.  
  
They're just kids.  
  
"Yeah," Jensen says. "That's okay."  
  
"It won't be forever," Jared says. "I want to--couldn't we practice it?" He stands up, smiling hopefully. He rubs at the side of his neck. "I could come to Monstropolis. You could show me around the Labyrinth, take me to that restaurant you were going on about."  
  
"Oh, no," Jensen says, immediately. The CDA would crack down before Jared could even leave the company headquarters. He sees the smile dim on Jared's face and quickly adds, "But we could go to dinner next weekend, if you want. I've been dreaming about gyros. Late, maybe."  
  
Jared nods. "Yeah, that sounds good. A movie? We might as well make it a classic first date. Are you gonna be able to get away?"  
  
"Yes," Jensen says. He's confident. "Curfews are for pussies, anyway."  
  
"Sweet," Jared says. "Meanwhile, it's one, which means lights out for me."  
  
"Bedtimes are for prospective boyfriends," Jensen clarifies.  
  
"Ah," Jared laughs. "Noted."  
  
****  
  
Sully's still in his office when Jensen gets back from his first date with Jared. The big guy’s got a tie slung around his neck, the neckwear decorated with cartoon kids screaming, mouths so big you can see their uvulas.  
  
"Hey," Jensen says. "You're wearing the tie I got you."  
  
Sully looks up from his desk, smiles. "Needed my lucky one today."  
  
Jensen grins, then takes a good look at Sully. His red eyes and matted fur. "You look tired," Jensen says. He walks over, pulls the folder Sully's studying over to himself, glances through it. He closes it firmly. "This can wait. Clock out."  
  
Sully nods, pushes back from his desk. He stretches, stifling a yawn. "Wait," he says. "Hey. How did your big night go?"  
  
Jensen groans. "Don't ask."  
  
"That bad?" Sully asks.  
  
Jensen falls into the chair across from Sully, feels the leather creak under him. He thinks over the way he hadn't been able to stop noting all the tiny differences from home. The sudden paralysis at seeing Jared in a light that wasn't warm and dim and close. "It was overwhelming. I think we were both nervous."  
  
"Hm," Sully says.  
  
Jensen kicks his feet up onto Sully's desk and Sully bats at them, tutting under his breath. Jensen grins, swings them back onto the ground.  
  
"It won't always be that way," Sully tells him.  
  
"You think?" Jensen grunts out a disgusted noise. "I just—I don’t know where we stand. I feel like I know squat. Nothing about anything."  
  
"Be easier on yourself," Sully says, gentle. He stands, grabs his hat from where it's hanging, picks up his briefcase. "Alright, boyo. Let's go home. You can tell me all about it on our way." He waits at the door, holding it open.  
  
Jensen stands. He slides his hands into his pockets, looks Sully in the eye. "Am I making the right choices?" he asks.  
  
Sully puts on his hat, touches the brim. He shuffles his feet. “I don’t want you to carry any regret,” he finally says. Every bone in his body an earnest one.  
  
****  
  
On their fifth date, Jared says, "You think I'm loose, don't you?"  
  
Jensen is used to Jared's non-sequiturs by now; he's learned to catch them as they go flying by. "Yes," Jensen says. "It's in the swing of your hips."  
  
Jared laughs, flicks a balled-up straw wrapper at Jensen's face, hits him square between the eyes, and Jensen thinks to himself, 'Bullseye.'  
  
They’re behind a fast food place, milkshakes still in hand, detritus of a quick, late-night bite. The parking lot is empty, the light from inside the restaurant only making it seem darker, here, outside.  
  
“How long will it take to walk back to your house?” Jensen asks.  
  
“Not long.” Jared leans against the short stone wall limning the lot. He pats the space next to him. “You want to sit? We don’t have to hurry unless you want to.”  
  
Jensen hops up onto the wall, kicks his heels off the stone.  
  
“Could I—“ Jared starts. He shakes his head. “Are you cold?”  
  
Jensen shakes his head. “No, I’m good.”  
  
Jared clears his throat, pushes off the wall. He moves to stand between Jensen’s legs, his hands settling on Jensen’s knees, making them go still and tense. Jensen can feel the heat of his palms.  
  
“You’re planning on kissing me, right?” Jensen asks.  
  
Jared lets out this startled bubble of laughter, licks his bottom lip. Jared leans in, and Jensen must close his eyes then, because he’s surprised when Jared’s mouth is suddenly against his. This tentative slide of lips, and Jensen shivers. He is cold.  
  
Jared pulls away, and when Jensen can bring himself to open his eyes, Jared is still close, shadows on his face, eyebrows knit together in concern. “Was that okay? What’s wrong?”  
  
“I don’t know.” Jensen scrubs at his face with both hands, then reaches out to keep Jared from moving away, grips the shirt at Jared’s sides, fists pressed to where Jared is soft. He leans his forehead on Jared’s shoulder, laughing, a little embarrassed. “I kind of thought I’d—I don’t know. I always pictured hearing music when I imagined this. You with me.”  
  
Jared’s quiet for a while, and Jensen doesn’t feel ready to look up, to see his face. He presses his eyes into the curve that slides up into Jared’s neck. Jared’s moving under him, but it’s only when Jensen feels Jared’s touch against his ear that he looks up to find himself being kissed again, an earbud slipped into his ear, voices singing, drums, guitar, a whole chorus soaring with melody; and Jensen touches Jared’s throat, kisses him with every bit inside him breaking open just the tiniest bit.  
  
When it’s done, Jared’s smiling. Headphones still connecting them, his hand curving around Jensen’s calf. “And now?” he asks. This joyful noise in Jensen’s ears.  
  
****  
  
Jensen's not exactly focused, back at home. Still, Monsters, Incorporated is sort of a family business and he does feel a sense of responsibility towards it, if not strictly a passion.  
  
But when Sully comes by and says, "I let the guilds form," Jensen's not surprised. He's spaced out in enough meetings to warrant news he isn't prepared for.  
  
Jensen nods. "Okay." He knows Sully doesn't make decisions lightly.  
  
"It'll keep us honest," Sully says.  
  
"You're honest."  
  
Sully smiles. He looks a little tired. "I'd like to be, at least." He pats Jensen's shoulder. "Hey. You've been floating around, head in the clouds."  
  
Jensen flushes. "I'm sorry."  
  
Sully's smile grows. "Don't be. It's nice, watching your toes skim the ground." His hand is heavy and kind on Jensen's shoulder. "Can you be a little more careful?" he asks. He seems so tired.  
  
****  
  
"I like Drake a lot," Jared says confidently, but then he smiles down at his burger before looking up at Jensen. "Er."  
  
Jensen shrugs. "I have no idea who that is."  
  
Jared laughs. "Yeah." He takes a bite, wipes away a smear of ketchup at the corner of his mouth, swallows. "He's this rapper. I don't know. I'm probably too square to like him, but I do."  
  
"Only squares use the word square," Jensen agrees. He stretches his legs out under the table, props one foot up against the seat just next to Jared's thigh.  
  
Jared smiles. "This is fun," he says, and Jensen beams back, doesn't even bother to try to dial it down.  
  
It's a nice little moment, interrupted by a guy in a school sweater dropping into the booth next to Jared, slapping a hand on Jared's chest before stealing a few fries. "Buddy boy," he hoots.  
  
Jared doesn't flash too much annoyance, just makes room and introductions. "Uh. Brad, this is Jensen, Jensen, Brad."  
  
"Hi," Jensen says. He pulls his feet back to his side of the table, straightens his back. It's the first time he's met one of Jared's friends.  
  
Brad looks between Jensen and Jared, wiping the grease off his fingers onto a paper napkin. "You two on a date? Are you the reason Jared keeps blowing off Lisa Portadero, who, by the way, is still completely hot for it."  
  
"Jesus," Jared says.  
  
"I told you we should go somewhere classier," Jensen points out. "I'm not so sure you appreciate my true value as a person."  
  
"This is totally a date," Brad decides. He slings an arm around Jared's shoulders, thumps Jared's chest again. "So what is it you like so much about my boy Jay?" he asks Jensen.  
  
Jensen raises an eyebrow.  
  
"You're right, unfair. This is a pretty uncomfortable situation for you." Brad turns to Jared. "Jared? Why hide Jensen under a bushel? He seems older and patronizing. You know how much I dig that."  
  
Jensen smirks.  
  
Jared groans, presses the heel of one hand against his eye. "Fuck, Brad." He sighs, drops his hand, smiles, tired, over at Jensen. "I just wanted to keep him to myself for a while," he says. It comes out quiet and fond and Jensen feels the warmth of it for days, a fire lit on the hearth.  
  
****  
  
Roz is waiting the next time Jensen sneaks through Jared's door. She has on her CDA vest. Not a good sign.  
  
"Are things about to go very bad?" Jensen asks.  
  
"It depends on your definition," Roz says. She adjusts her glasses. "You stepped in some mud. I'm going to help you clean up."  
  
****  
  
Jensen has just enough time to dash strokes across a piece of scrap paper, slip it under Jared's door with a knock.  
  
 _Jared_ , it says, _could you be my forever girl?_  
  
Jensen paces. He can't really--he doesn't have days. He doesn't even have hours. But this is a decision he can't make by himself, and it's almost soothing, to know that there are more hands and hearts involved in this than his own. He whispers out a quick, "Please," staring hard at the crack of light underneath the door.  
  
He puts a hand on the doorknob. He touches the button that would cut off the power, making bright lights go dark.  
  
He presses his fingertips to the moldings of the door, like he could feel Jared in the points of heat.  
  
A lined piece of notebook paper slides between his feet. Jensen picks it up, sits on the floor in front of the gateway. He reads:  
  
 _Stay._  
  
****  
  
Roz is sitting across from Jensen, sheafs of papers stacked on the desk between them. She's reading through contracts and exit agreements in a low monotone, and Jensen adjusts his grip on the pen Sully had given to him when he'd first started working at Monsters, Inc. It's a familiar, balanced weight in his hand.  
  
Sully had been upset; Jensen could tell. He'd hugged Jensen tight, lifted him up off his feet, and hadn't said much of anything.  
  
"I'll miss you," Jensen had said, and Sully had just nodded with tears in his eyes, patted Jensen's face with one paw like he'd used to, when Jensen was still a little boy and he could still rest his whole face in the pad of Sully's hand.  
  
Leaving is even harder than Jensen thought it would be.  
  
"Your school records will be intact. You should be able to enroll in grad school, if you can finish out some credits beforehand. The papers are in triplicate--a true joy, triplicate," Roz says. "Sign here."  
  
Jensen signs. "Who knew the paperwork would be ready and waiting for something like this," he tries to joke.  
  
Roz doesn't look up. "Be glad you weren’t around when Mab had Fairy Acquisitions doing brisk business. You're not the first. You won't be the last." She points. "Initial here."  
  
Jensen scrawls letters.  
  
Roz picks up the papers, taps the ends against the desk, straightening them. The fluorescent light above is humming, a rippling pond of white noise. She licks her finger, flips a page over, then turns it back toward Jensen. She frames the stack with her hands, looks over the rims of her glasses. "Now. Are you sure about all this?" she asks. "There won't be any going back."  
  
Jensen thinks what it would be like, to see Jared's door get shredded. To be in the middle of a working bay at Monsters Incorporated, watching a machine spit out splinters. "Yes," he says. "I'm sure." He thinks he's sure.  
  
Roz pushes her glasses up. She points. "Sign here."  
  
****  
  
"You're just gonna leave?" Mike says. "Without so much as a kiss goodbye, a 'thanks-for-all-you've-done'?"  
  
Jensen gets down on one knee, wraps his arms around Mike as best he can. He kisses the top of Mike's head. "Goodbye. Thanks for all you've done."  
  
"I'm not okay with this," Mike says, "I have to say it. I know it's not like me to put myself out there, but it's out of decency and courtesy that I say I'm not happy. Too much is changing around here. You know the guilds are a thorn in my side, don't you? Who will draw it delicately from my injured paw?"  
  
"I'm not happy either." He hugs Mike again. "Don't cry on me, okay? This is a new shirt."  
  
Mike pushes him away with his skinny arms, blinks his glassy eye a few times. "It makes you look like a clown."  
  
Sully is standing a few feet away, in front of a couple CDA agents. He has his arms crossed, face shuttered.  
  
Jensen opens the door. He puts one foot over the threshold, looks back. Sully lifts one hand, fingers unfurling, and Jensen can feel the stretch of every one, like keys turning in five locks, laying something vulnerable in his chest bare.  
  
"Bye,” he says, and Jensen racks his brain, trying to make sure there wasn’t anything else he wanted to say.  
  
****  
  
It's only after the door closes that Jensen realizes he'd forgotten to tell Sully that he'd moved the files for the arbitration with Imaginary Friends, Ltd. to the top drawer of his desk. He jumps forward, throws the door open, but there's nothing but Jared's winter coats, a baseball bat, a few spare blankets.  
  
"Hey," Jared says from behind him. "You okay?"  
  
Jensen nods. He turns inside the closet, arms out, measuring the span of it, then shakes his head, hard, strides out. He pulls Jared into a hug, arms wrapped around Jared's waist, face pressed into Jared's neck.  
  
Jared's hands slide up and down Jensen's back. "It's okay," he says. His voice rumbles in his chest. "Jeff cried like a bitch when we moved him out to college."  
  
Jensen snorts. He breathes Jared in.  
  
"Maybe you can visit," Jared says after a while. His thumb is rubbing circles into Jensen's lower back.  
  
Jensen sighs. He pulls away from Jared, runs his hands through his hair, finding his composure. He settles back into the edges of his body, lets himself fill out. "Naw," he says. "They're probably shredding as we speak."  
  
So this is growing up, Jensen thinks. A winnowing down of the paths he can choose to walk.  
  
****  
  
 _aced my midterms. it's strnge, this sea of my own genius. college the flimsiest of watergoing crafts, still unsure upon which distant shore of greatness i'll land. like edison in his youth, or Chingis Khan, terrtories yet to be conquered_  
  
Jensen rolls his eyes and smirks, holding his phone under his desk in the library. He's pretty sure Jared could write a novel in text form, easy. He puts the phone facedown next to his textbook. He's still got two more exams to go, and he's got a paper he needs to bash out if he wants to fulfill the last of his prerequisites. He's just slid back into study mode when his phone vibrates again.  
  
 _bt-dubs, that last text was pretty good._  
  
Jensen laughs.  
  
****  
  
He still wasn't sure how much of it was Roz greasing wheels, and how much was luck. Jared had been ready to head out to college in Austin in a few weeks, and Jensen had just gone ahead, his transfer mapped out, an apartment squared away.  
  
It's ferociously easy, really, to change your entire life. You just put it on like anything new, one leg at a time.  
  
****  
  
It's strange, though, all the little, unexpected ways you shift. Adaptations you never saw coming. Jensen catalogs: photos, voicemails, ticket stubs. He buys a video camera, cheap, from this chick who lives two floors up from Jared.  
  
"You know you're getting quiet," Jared says, looking up into the lens.  
  
Jensen reframes him, the broad torso filling up the left side of the shot; the coffee shop rundown and full of faded warmth in the background. "Am I?" he says.  
  
Jared grins, the sun glaring through the window behind him. He's all shadow. "I'm starting to worry you have hidden depths."  
  
Jensen stands, moves until the sun is blocked by Jared's head, watches the camera readjust to the lighting, the flickering contrast. "I wouldn't lose sleep. I'm still mostly with you for your bangin' bod."  
  
Jared laughs. "Good to know." He reaches up, covers the lens with his hand, tugs it down. "Hey, Jensen, come on. Put that away."  
  
"Okay, okay." Jensen snaps the viewing window shut, lets the camera hang at his side, then leans in for a kiss. A firm press of lips, and Jensen hums into it, turns his head just so, nose brushing against Jared's cheek. He peeks, makes sure Jared's eyes are closed, before slowly lifting the camera back up, aiming it at the two of them.  
  
Jared pushes him away with two fists wrapped up in Jensen's jacket, bursts into laughter. "Jesus Christ, Jensen."  
  
Jensen laughs, too, eyes going comically wide. "Dude, how did you know?"  
  
Jared shakes his head. He pushes the camera away again, raises an eyebrow pointedly at Jensen until Jensen clicks it off. "It's not that I really mind, but--" he shrugs. "Why the obsession?" He taps the lens.  
  
Jensen takes a sip of his coffee. "I'm a few hours of footage away from what's going to be a pretty masterful documentary."  
  
“Audiences the world over do find me riveting." Jared stands, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. "The time has come for me to blow you off once again." He kisses Jensen quick. "Hey. Don't get too caught up, okay? Our best days are still ahead of us."  
  
"That a promise?" Jensen asks.  
  
****  
  
Jensen's apartment does a pretty good impression of being furnished.  
  
Jared's friend Brad had come out from South Carolina, who knows why. Because it's a Saturday, Jensen guesses. He looks good, born to wear the high and tight. He's one of many factors converging--Jensen had just survived the group project to end all group projects, and Jared had decided that he needed to remedy what he'd concluded was a severe failure to drink in his first semester of college--that led to a crush of people occupying Jensen's apartment. To be honest, Jensen wasn’t thrilled that the first night both him and Jared had free and clear in weeks was going to be spent in the company of dozens, but.  
  
It's thinned out now, though. His couch is pressed back against the wall, his rug rolled up and leaned against a bookcase. The room lit up by Ikea, already soft yellow lights diffused even further through paper shades. Like you’re looking through a lens smeared with Vaseline.  
  
Brad's shirtless, lying back on the couch in his jeans, an aluminum can sweating in his fist.  
  
Jensen's drunk, he's pretty sure. It's the only reason he can think of as to why he's getting ready to wrestle Jared in the middle of his living room.  
  
Brad whoops, and Jared grins, a stripe of teeth. He launches forward and Jensen braces himself, gets down low, ready for the impact even as it hits, digs his heels in against the slide back.  
  
They grapple and there's a looseness to it, not having to worry where his hands land, feeling the jump of muscles under skin and damp cotton. It's fun until Jared locks his arms behind Jensen's knees, shoves, and Jensen falls flat on his back, the wind knocked out of him for a few shocked seconds.  
  
His breath comes back with a flicker of anger, this hot rush behind Jensen's eyes, and Jensen grunts, twists Jared off of him, careless and violent, pins him down to the ground, a knee in Jared's gut, his forearm a shade too close to Jared's throat.  
  
Jared laughs. He wheezes out a half-amused, "Shit, Jen."  
  
Jensen eases up immediately, feels a sudden ache in his thighs. He lets himself go heavy on top of Jared, face pressed into Jared's shoulder.  
  
Brad whistles. "The clash of titans."  
  
Jared smells like beer, and sweat, and Old Spice; and Jensen bites Jared's shoulder, hard, makes him yelp. "Jesus! What was that for?"  
  
The thing is, he doesn't want to forget. That he has teeth, and claws.  
  
****  
  
On Monday, Jensen swings by Jared's dorm room after his last class. He shoves open the door and finds Jared sitting on the floor, nose buried in a manual, packaging strewn around him.  
  
"I got a new laptop," Jared says without looking up.  
  
"Oh fuck this shit."  
  
"Careful," Jared says.  
  
Jensen shrugs off his backpack, tosses it high and toward a corner, finds satisfaction in the whump it makes at impact. He collapses onto Jared's bed, face-first. "I fucking hate when you get new electronics."  
  
"That's okay," Jared says. "I love it enough for the both of us."  
  
Jensen turns his head toward the wall, picks at the charred cotton where he had put out a joint in Jared's bedspread. They'd fought about that for a few days. He digs his fingers into the bristling stuffing.  
  
"Holy shit," Jared says. "This is the motherfucking king of all laptops. I'm serious, Jensen." He rattles off some specs in this breathless tone of voice. "It's enough to make a man cry," he finishes.  
  
Jensen turns his face into Jared's pillow. "If only it could give you a good blowjob," he says. "You'd finally have the perfect boyfriend."  
  
"Hm," Jared says. "With the right attachment." Jensen can see the shrug Jared's committing, the nonchalant, almost-sincerity of his body language.  
  
Jensen flips over onto his side, facing Jared, demands, "Are you going to suck my dick, or what? I have stuff to do."  
  
Jared finally looks up, puzzled. He scans Jensen's face, and Jensen imagines the calculations buzzing, zeroes and ones behind Jared's eyes. Jared stands all the way up, bouncing on his toes a little, then timbers over onto Jensen, catching himself at the last second.  
  
Jensen groans under the weight, one of Jared's hands wedging itself under Jensen's back, fingers cold where they slip under Jensen's shirt. "What happened to your old laptop?" Jensen asks.  
  
Jared's face is pressed into Jensen's shoulder. "I left it at the library--"  
  
"--Jesus, Jared--"  
  
"--I went back for it like, two seconds later. But then the next week it kept crashing on me. I think some asshole put a virus on it."  
  
Jensen draws in shallow breaths. Jared's cutting off the circulation to his thighs. "You downloaded some sketchy porn."  
  
"No!" Jared says. "Disgusting."  
  
Jensen laughs.  
  
"Unrelated, if you're wondering what to get me for Arbor Day, a Rapidshare account would be sweet."  
  
"We're not exchanging gifts on Arbor Day."  
  
"Rapidshare Pro would mean I wouldn't have to suffer through a wait time when I'm in a hurry for my videos." Jared pauses. "My G-rated videos."  
  
"Okay."  
  
"That I download off the Internet. And are safe for work."  
  
"Alright," Jensen says, smiling. He has his eyes wide open. He wonders if Jared's eyes are open, too. If he's studying the loops of thread comprising Jensen's shirt. "You need to take better care of your things."  
  
"I take excellent care of you," Jared says.  
  
"You're on your fourth iPod."  
  
Jared groans. "And my twelfth pair of headphones, and my eighth water bottle, and my third pair of sunglasses." He lifts his head, stares accusingly. "And do you know how I know these specifics?" He points at Jensen's face.  
  
Jensen rolls his eyes. "Be more responsible," he says.  
  
"Wow," Jared says. "Okay. Message received." He doesn't move for a minute, maybe two. To prove he isn't stung, Jensen guesses, but eventually he rolls off, goes to his desk, putters around the room. Tries to avoid avoiding Jensen's eyes.  
  
Jensen sprawls on Jared's bed, watches Jared pull off his shirt, scrub some deodorant under his arms, tug on a clean one.  
  
When Jared's done distracting himself, he stands at the foot of the bed, one hand gripping the doorknob, swinging the door back and forth. "I'm irresponsible with those things because I know they can be replaced," he says, finally.  
  
"Yeah," Jensen says. He sighs. "Yeah, okay."  
  
The thing is, every once in a while, Jensen will flip the light switch in his apartment and his breath will catch, and he'll wait. To see if the lights come on.  
  
One day, he wants to tell Jared, the light bulb will burn out and that'll be the last one.  
  
****  
  
Here's a stupid story:  
  
Once, Jared was webcamming with his sister who was back in San Antonio and she lugged her computer out to the living room where their parents were watching _Extreme Makeover: Home Edition_ and made them wave, and Jared's mom immediately sat up and pulled her hair back, and Jared's dad asked Megan where he was supposed to look, and Megan asked Jared if he'd booked his flight home for next weekend or not and then Jared turned to Jensen and rolled his eyes, grinning a little and his mom asked, "Who is that?"  
  
Jensen froze where he was, just out of sight of the camera, tucked an elbow discreetly out of frame.  
  
Jared lifted an eyebrow, then his laptop--brand new--and pointed it at Jensen. "This is Jensen. I told you about him."  
  
Jensen tried to smile. It looked pretty bad, he could see it in the little window in the bottom right. But Jared's mom and sister beamed back at him, and Jared's dad nodded, and Jensen thought, 'I've known your son for ages and ages,' and he said, "Nice to meet you."  
  
And then, later that night, while he was falling asleep back in his own apartment, he thought, 'They never met Jared,' and he got up from bed, and slid open the door to his shallow closet, and he sat in it. His jackets rippling around his head, empty sleeves on his shoulders.  
  
****  
  
Jensen's taking a shower. His eyes are closed as he leans back into the spray of water, washing the shampoo out of his hair. He scrubs one hand down his face, then blinks his eyes open to find Jared peering over the curtain of the shower, chin resting on the rod.  
  
"Hey," Jared says. "I'm standing on four of your textbooks."  
  
Jensen splashes water up at Jared. "When did you get back? How's the family?"  
  
"They're fine," Jared says. "So I was thinking."  
  
Jensen reaches over for the soap, rubs the bar of Ivory across his belly. "Yeah?"  
  
"I'm super stoked for next year."  
  
Jensen laughs. "Because second years have all the real fun?"  
  
"No," Jared says. He beckons for the bar of soap and Jensen hands it over. Jared disappears, stepping down from his perch, tugs the shower curtain open just enough for his arms to reach through. He soaps up Jensen's back in broad circles, hands kneading at the muscles there. "I guess not next year specifically. I'm just excited to be with you."  
  
Jensen laughs again, alert, a little anxious. "What?"  
  
Jared's hands slide, smooth, across Jensen's neck. "I think we're just going to get better, you know? I'm kind of...looking forward to fighting more." He sounds happy. "And getting to that point where you're so fucking fed up with me, you don't know if I'm even worth it anymore, and then you decide I am. And I’ll keep getting better for you. So you can be sure of me."  
  
Jensen stares down at his feet. The water going tepid against his skin. Steam rolling.  
  
"And one night, I'm just going to blow up. Over something stupid, you know? You lost the screws to our bed during the move into our new place, even though I specifically told you to watch out for them. I even put them in a baggie. And I'm gonna fucking shout, 'Do you give a good goddamn about the words that come out of my mouth? Do you give a shit?'" Jared laughs. "And you're gonna say, 'I fucking left everything behind for you, motherfucker! What do you think?'"  
  
Jensen clenches his hands.  
  
"And I'll shut my dumbass mouth. Because you'll be right." Jared slides his arms around Jensen's waist. He presses his face into the space behind Jensen's ear, lips brushing over skin stretched over bone. "I love you," he says.  
  
Jensen sighs. He feels every drop of water thundering down onto him. Pouring down his fingers, like he's the bed for rivers flowing. He leans back against Jared. "You're getting wet," he says.  
  
****  
  
"Hey," Jared says, during finals week. "So, you have nowhere to go over this longest of breaks. No one and nothing."  
  
"Delightful," Jensen says.  
  
"Come to my place!" Jared beams, arms spread wide. Attracting more attention than is entirely appropriate for a library.  
  
"You know who I miss?" Jensen asks. "That Jared kid. Seventeen, yet to bloom. Sensitive. Thoughtful. Quiet."  
  
"Yeah," Jared says. "You were a total pedo."  
  
****  
  
The house yawns across acres. Muddy with ells and additions. Jensen's never gotten to look at it from the outside before. You can see the way it grew; every room made for someone.  
  
He fumbles through meeting Jared's family, then dinner. Soaks in this side of Jared: son and brother. By the time bedtime rolls around, he's exhausted. It's been a long day.  
  
"Jensen," Jared's mom says. "Why don't you take Jared's room. JT, you can double up with Jeff tonight, can't you? Go on up, Jensen. Bathroom's on your right."  
  
Jensen's chest starts buzzing at the foot of the stairs, and he takes them two at a time, up to Jared's bedroom. Opens the door. He's scared, which is stupid, but he is. He holds his breath flipping on the light.  
  
"Hey," Jared says from behind him. "You alright?"  
  
Jensen nods, but he doesn't open his mouth to reply, just walks over to the closet. He grips the knob, turns it--he's so sure--and pulls open the door to see only old sports gear. Jared's chin-up bar and spare sheets.  
  
Jensen laughs, turns to face Jared, face hot. "Damn," he says.  
  
Jared looks at him seriously, mouth twisting for a second before he smiles. "Foiled again," he says.  
  
"I'm an idiot," Jensen says.  
  
"If you're an idiot, so am I," Jared tells him. "I shove a letter under that door every time I'm home."  
  
"Yeah?" Jensen laughs. "Saying what?"  
  
Jared sits on the bed. "Just stuff." He shrugs; his shoulders, when they drop, sloping steeper than they've been. They're narrow again, the light from a bare bulb sending same old shadows across Jared's face when he smiles, small; and Jensen finds himself leaning against the frame of the closet door, staring at something familiar.  
  
Dear to me, Jensen thinks. Amazing, in its own way, to know Jared still has the smile he first fell in love with, under all those changing features. Will always. He feels his gut punching up into high gear, this thrill slapping across the back of his skull. He launches himself at Jared, tackles him back onto the bed, pins Jared's arms up above his head. "Of all the doors," Jensen crows.  
  
Jared snorts, beams up at him. "You're a fucking weirdo," he says.  
  
Jensen raises an eyebrow. He puts his face to Jared's, noses brushing. "Scared?" he asks. His stomach flying.  
  
****  
  
They're in bed. Jared had been dozing in fits and starts, but he’s still for now, wrapped around Jensen, one hand up Jensen's shirt and resting over his chest. It's very, very dark. And Jensen is awake.  
  
He's lucky. He can feel it in his bones, around every corner, in every beat of his heart. He grips Jared’s hand.  
  
Just another second awake! **  
** __


	2. Jared's POV

Jared, sometimes he feels like he's trapped in the past, his television a magical window into the future: life in the 21st century. He doesn't tell anyone this, of course. You learn to zip your lip quick.  
  
Jared shot up the summer before his junior year and he thought this was his ticket to a life changed. He was probably going to ascend to the next level of popularity. Instead, he made varsity water polo only to watch some early-promoted sophomore take his spot as a starter.  
  
"Look at my arm span," he said to Coach, but Coach just pursed his lips, said, "My decision stands, JT."  
  
****  
  
When he was researching schools, his dad never sat him down and said, "Son. You know how much I want to help you out, but." He just nods carefully when Jared rattles off statistics for schools on the coasts and GPA's of previously admitted classes and asks, "You're applying to state schools, too, though, aren't you?"  
  
His mom is really careful about not saying too much. But sometimes, when Jared comes home too early from practice, she'll be on the phone, arguing with some creditor. "I swear to God," she'll say when she hangs up. "Co-signing for family is a fool's game."  
  
Jared doesn't think they’re in trouble, exactly, but he gets a job anyway. He's scanning Craigslist for part time work, but it's Brad who ends up seeing _Help Wanted_ in the window of the car wash on Cherry Blossom, signs them both up for after school shifts.  
  
It's not a bad job. The usual manager is complacent to such a degree that Jared creates a saga around the guy’s slow slide into zombification. "He's not dead," he tells Brad. "But the lack of brain activity tricks his body into decomposing."  
  
"Dude," Brad says, throwing sponges against the wall to see if they'll stick. "This is why, every game Friday, you have to put on your Speedo and _never even get it wet_."  
  
"His fingernails are falling out. You don't believe me?"  
  
"Shut the fuck up." Brad points a squeegee at Jared with his free hand. "Let's wash my car again."  
  
"Hey!" The manager rouses from his undead slumber, sticking his head out the window of the vestibule. "Wash that shitty junker again. You need to draw in some goddamn customers."  
  
Brad salutes and Jared sighs, tugs at one of the microfiber cloths he'd stuffed down his pants.  
  
Brad slaps a sponge against the windshield of his Buick. "Fuck," he shouts, "Are we ever fucking busy. Must be the busiest, best car wash in all of Texas."  
  
****  
  
Three days ago, Jared was on the couch watching _When Good Pets Go Bad_ when his sister strolled through the front door with four of her friends.  
  
"We rented a movie," she said.  
  
"What movie?" Jared asked, not looking away from the screen. He knows that that elephant is going to step on the Camry. He knows it.  
  
"A good one. Can you get out of here?"  
  
Jared snorted. "Wow, do you not see what's on the television? Ocupado."  
  
She'd made this angry, entitled noise in the back of her throat. "You're a child," she spit out.  
  
Jared just sprawled bigger over the sofa, his basketball shorts riding up his thighs. That one girl, Tina, had a fat crush on him. He gestured at the TV with the remote. "Look at this. Insane, right?" he said to her.  
  
"Oh my god," his sister said, starting to laugh out of nowhere. "Remember when you used to wet the bed because of the monster in your closet? I mean, of course you do. It was only, like, four years ago."  
  
****  
  
Anyway, that explains the dream. It doesn't explain why the monster in his closet looks like something out of Teen Beat now, though.  
  
Jared has reason to believe hormones are behind that particular turn of events.  
  
****  
  
"Lucid dreaming," he tells Brad, "is kind of like waking up inside your dream. Like, let's say you're soaring over the Grand Canyon--"  
  
"--or finding yourself just outside of Megan Fox's bathroom--"  
  
"--and then you realize, 'Oh, shit, I'm dreaming. No way Megan Fox would decide I'm her desired sex object in any other scenario'--"  
  
"--But, on the bright side, great. Because it's my dream, right? And now Megan Fox is going to feed me chicken wings."  
  
Jared sighs. He picks out a Strawberry Shortcake novelty bar, slides the window closed on the ice box. "I don't even remember where I was going with this."  
  
Brad shrugs, strolls slowly through the liquor aisle of the 7-11. "You had a wet dream about some hottie that lives in your closet."  
  
"We didn't have sex," Jared says.  
  
"Well," Brad says. "Don't waste your time whining about it. If you want me, take me."  
  
****  
  
The second night his closet door opens, Jared stays awake until Jensen leaves at around four. Jensen, who's real.  
  
Jared's beyond exhausted the next day, but the secret kind of rattles around inside of him. He thinks this is what it would be like to get away with robbing a bank. The buzz under your fingernails, like your blood's running too fast for your veins, ready to burst through where the skin is thin.  
  
Ms. Conlin splits the class into groups during Econ AP to talk about their presentations next week. Jared's chewing on his thumbnail while he looks over his notes, and Lisa Portadero slaps his hand away from his mouth and Jared looks up, surprised.  
  
"Damn, girl," he says without stopping to think, and Lisa raises an eyebrow, says, "It's a bad habit," and Jared replies, "Is it my fault I have an oral fixation?"  
  
After school, Brad's driving them over to the car wash, blasting, like, who knows, Rascal Flatts or some shit, and he shouts over the music, "So what's this I hear about you begging to eat out Lisa Portadero?"  
  
Jared asks, "Do you miss your dad?"  
  
Brad turns down the music, and rolls down the window. He resettles his cowboy hat on top of his head. "Not cool, man," he says.  
  
"No." Jared shakes his head. "I'm not trying to shut you up. I was just--I'm wondering." He slaps Brad's chest, remembers the way Jensen had smiled out his orphan confession; the way Brad had snickered when he'd told Jared his dad had finally moved his bum ass out. Jared had just laughed back then. "Come on. You're my best friend."  
  
Brad shrugs, readjusts the rearview mirror. "I don't know," he finally says. "I try not to think about the guy."  
  
"Is that better?" Jared asks. "Or worse?"  
  
Brad rolls his eyes. "It is what it is."  
  
****  
  
Jensen's surprisingly well-informed about the trappings of Jared's world, and when Jared asks, Jensen says, "Yeah, our energy supply depends on thousands of monsters crossing over into human homes on a nightly basis. I'd put decent money on my ability to run circles around the sum total of your world knowledge."  
  
"Cool," Jared says. "That's not cocky at all."  
  
Jensen grins. "Hey, I didn't think so either."  
  
Jensen's wearing this sweater, blue and fuzzy, that looks soft to the touch, beefs him up so he looks about ten pounds heavier. It's hard to remember that he's a corporate man; someone responsible for wages, and insurance, and shit. He's not that much older than Jared, but sometimes Jared can see it. It's in his expressions, the way he smiles around words, like flashing teeth will change what they mean.  
  
"Do you want to talk about work?" Jared asks. Because maybe he does.  
  
"God, no," Jensen says. "Do you want to hear about work?"  
  
"If it's on your mind," Jared says.  
  
Jensen looks over at Jared. "Hm. Something to sleep on."  
  
Jared wants to touch his sleeve. Ghost his hand across it. "This makes you look like Grover," he says, plucking at the sweater.  
  
Jensen quirks his lips. “That’s sort of the point, actually. I’ve had it forever.”  
  
Jared grins. “Big shot’s got a blankie.”  
  
Jensen winks. “Just because I learned to hang on to the things I love.”  
  
****  
  
Jared picks up odd jobs around the neighborhood during the weekends. Nothing major. The first time he went around, knocking on doors, most people seemed taken aback. "I didn't think teenagers did this in real life," Mrs. Lee said.  
  
Jared smiled, showed his palms. "Here I am."  
  
He gets hired to mow a few lawns, clean Mr. Klinkenberg's gutters. He tutors that Grayson kid in math.  
  
"Dude," Brad says, "we don't live in fucking Smallville."  
  
"I like to keep busy," Jared says.  
  
"What are you even lining your pockets for," Brad asks. "It's not like you're wining and dining any ladies.”  
  
Jared pulls off his work gloves, one finger at a time. "What do you want me to do? Spend all my time with you down at the pool hall?"  
  
"Yes," Brad says. "With you gone, I'm the worst player there." He spits. "What's so bad about the pool hall?"  
  
Jared shrugs. "Nothing." He slaps his gloves against his open palm, staring off toward the sun. It's slipping down toward the horizon. "Time just...crawls."  
  
****  
  
One night, the door bursts open, and Jensen comes skidding through, hair mussed, tie swinging. He closes the door behind him, quick, and stays there, pressed against the door. Holding it shut.  
  
When he finally turns back around, Jared reaches forward and flicks his tie. "What happened to your tie clip," Jared says.  
  
Jensen holds up his hands, catching his breath. "Holy shit."  
  
"So disheveled," Jared tuts. "Pretty unprofessional."  
  
Jensen beams. He slaps both hands on Jared's shoulders, shakes him a little. "Dude, they are going bananas over there. I'm serious, like, into the vortex."  
  
Jared laughs, Jensen's giddiness spilling up his edges. "What's going on? Is everything okay?"  
  
Jensen blushes, collects himself. "Um. Don't get--I just phoned in an anonymous tip saying Randall Boggs had this massive store of children's shoes, and dolls, and used Kleenex." He snorts.  
  
Jared furrows his brow. "I don't get it."  
  
Jensen shakes his head, holds up his hands. "No, I mean. That's like a big deal. The CDA, they shave you right down if you so much as brush against a ponytail. Decontamination involves a hose you could house Sasquatch in." His eyes go big. "And dude, Randall Boggs did not go quietly."  
  
Jared snickers at Jensen's barely suppressed glee. "Why do you keep calling him by his full name."  
  
"It was insane!" Jensen says. "The motherfucker's crazy. He went buckwild ninja assassin on the CDA's ass, I kid you not."  
  
Jared smiles fondly at Jensen, both hands bracing Jensen's torso. "So you just decided you were going to call in some sort of fake bomb threat today? Were you bored?"  
  
"Harsh," Jensen says. "You make me sound like some grade-A delinquent."  
  
Jared raises an eyebrow.  
  
Jensen groans. "I need some heavy cover. I'm here most nights and I don't see that changing anytime soon." He flashes an okay sign. "It's going to take me at least another week to get through Left 4 Dead."  
  
Jared sighs. "Just take my goddamn Xbox."  
  
Jensen jumps onto Jared's bed, stretches his legs out, crossing them at his ankles. "Boo," he says.  
  
****  
  
Jared has a lot of secrets, most of them secret for the reason of shame. He doesn't tell his parents that he spent forty minutes, once, trying to hack into this pay-for-porn site. He doesn't tell Brad that he deliberately wears his old Speedo because he's pretty sure he's got a decent ass.  
  
Sometimes he wishes he could tell someone about Jensen, though. Brad's surprisingly practical; one of those kids that's always about a good time, and then you bring up the Bermuda Triangle, or imaginary friends, or religion, and he says some crazy unexpected shit: "The human brain is programmed to find patterns, buddy. Don't make something out of nothing."  
  
Jensen's sitting right there, at the back of Jared's mouth, this bit between his teeth that he's always working. He wants to spit the name out, just say it.  
  
One time, he says to Brad, "So you know how I dreamed about the guy in my closet?" and Brad says, "Jesus Christ, I hope you change your sheets. I sit on your bed all the damn time," and gets this 'fuck-this-again?' kind of look on his face, so. That kills it.  
  
****  
  
Fucking-Derek gets pulled for ripping the Speedo off a dude from Baylock. You twist a guy's balls underwater, sure, that's fair game, but you never fucking leave evidence. It's like he was asking to be benched.  
  
"He flew too high, shone too bright," Brad says.  
  
Jared plays decent that first game, not great, but keeps his head above water, makes the passes. Palms that ball like a motherfucker. When he gets out of the water, Serge tosses him a towel, like that's how they usually do.  
  
Coach has his arms crossed, his hands up high in his pits. "You're skinny," he says.  
  
****  
  
"You're on the water polo team?" Jensen says. He dangles Jared's Speedo off one finger. "This is what you wear?"  
  
****  
  
Jensen can ride his last nerve, like that time he kept yapping on about Jared having a girlfriend, as if Jared wasn't allowed to have secrets from him, and Jared almost said, "Dude, like we ever talk about anything other than video games, or the shenanigans in Monstropolis." Jared's glad he kept his mouth shut, though; he likes hearing about the shenanigans in Monstropolis. Besides, Jensen already knows everything there is to know about Jared's world. He could run circles around what Jared knows.  
  
Jensen is this whole other being, you know? Still too much like something that stepped out of a dream.  
  
This one night, they were shooting the Axis enemy, Jared cross-legged on the bed, Jensen on his stomach next to him, and Jared got sniped. Jensen snickered, and Jared shouted, "Jesus," and tossed his controller to the floor, and let himself keel over, press his face into Jensen's back. He stayed there, nose squashed flat, the soft cotton of Jensen's shirt catching on the stubble on his chin.  
  
"Ugh," Jensen said. "You weigh like a million pounds." But he didn't move.  
  
That's probably when it happened. Maybe it was pheromones, who knows.  
  
****  
  
A lot of stuff starts snowballing at once. Coach is riding him like Jared is finally ready for market. He treads water for what feels like an eternity, arms stretched up above his head, tries to find ways to drown without Coach noticing. He's missing out on shifts at the car wash, makes it up on the weekends as best he can, and Brad starts bitching that he's fucking sick of Serge and Sherman, and that fucking-Derek can fuck a duck.  
  
"If you want us to have some alone time," Jared says. "Just ask."  
  
"Fuck you and your shit," Brad replies.  
  
On top of that, Jared catches some 48-hour bug that knocks him flat. Makes him feel like a gargoyle, made to spew fluids.  
  
He has this fever-dream, that Jensen wakes him up in the middle of the night, draws a hand across his forehead. Puts a washcloth on his head and just looks at him, real worried.  
  
The next day he wakes up to his mom carrying in a glass of orange juice and some Tylenol. "How're you feeling today?" she asks, then she leans over and picks up a still-damp washcloth and says, "Jared Tristan, if you're well enough to throw off tender mercies, you are well enough to go to school."  
  
He's actually well enough to put up a decent fight, but that just gets his ass sent to second period. When Lisa asks him to the Sadie Hawkins dance, he's too tired to say no.  
  
It's probably dramatic to blame the beginning of the end on that.  
  
****  
  
Brad gets asked by this girl he really likes. Jared knows Brad is gone for her because they go to all three of the school choir's Christmas concerts and Katie doesn't even have a solo. Not a 'fa' to herself.  
  
"I mean, what do you think, JT?" Brad asks. "She wears a lot of makeup, right?"  
  
"Does it matter what I think?" Jared scrubs at the hubcaps. He grunts, wrings out the rag, then squints up at Brad. "Do _you_ like her?"  
  
Brad gives him the middle finger.  
  
The dance itself isn't so bad. Serge and a bunch of the other water polo guys show up halfway through and drag Jared to the bathroom and try to get him to pound some vodka, but the last time he got drunk, Jensen put him to bed and gave him this look. Not angry or anything. More reassessing.  
  
He'd left a note for Jensen. They were supposed to meet tonight, but there wasn't a way to get out of the dance. Lisa had already made up matching T-shirts for the both of them. But he'd made sure to say he’d be back around midnight, hoping Jensen would wait, so he takes the shot they hand him and only pretends to swallow it.  
  
The guys think it's fucking hilarious when the alcohol goes splat on the tile. Serge throws an arm around his neck and says, "You think I'm that drunk, you slippery fuck?" but then he declares no-more-vodka-for-Jay on account of his wastefulness.  
  
When he gets back to Lisa, she leans to one side of him to see Serge and the guys piling out of the bathroom behind him and then looks back up at Jared, tuts. "Poor baby," she says, then, "Don't worry, if you get alcohol poisoning, I promise to roll you out of my car _right next_ to the ER."  
  
Lisa makes Jared's Top 5 that night: she thinks Brad is hilarious, and doesn't make fun of Jared's dancing too much; she just mirrors him, laughing so hard he can hear her over the music, even there, right next to the speakers.  
  
Towards eleven, Katie comes bursting through the crowd, grabs Lisa's wrist and beckons for Jared to follow and they weave their way to the front of a circle, in the middle of which is Brad. He's flushed red, coming to the tail end of some magnificent routine, and when he spots Katie again, he beams, points, then grips his shirt at the buttons, rips it open.  
  
Katie screams, and Lisa is tearing up with laughter, her hair flying around her face, escaping from the sticky bonds of hairspray.  
  
That's pretty much the end of the night, unless you count getting escorted out by the teacher-chaperones. He goes to kiss Lisa on the cheek, but he misses, lands at the corner of her lips, and she laughs again, pats his hand and says, "Next time, loverboy," before sprinting off toward her house, heels in hand.  
  
When Jared gets home, he opens the door to his room quietly. It's late, and he wants to splash some water on his face, cool down, but he goes to his bedroom first. Jensen isn't there, though. Just Jared's baseball cap sitting on his bed. Jared could have sworn he'd left that on its hook. In its place, where it belongs.  
  
****  
  
He doesn't think it was a message, but he thinks about that a lot.  
  
He wishes he'd taken a picture before he'd put the hat back. Just so he'd have some proof, so he could show it to Brad and say, "See? Who moved that, then? Who?"  
  
****  
  
The next few weeks, he paces his bedroom at night and learns to sleep light. The slightest creak of floorboards and he breaks awake so fast his heart hammers, jolted out of its sleepy rhythms. It gets bad.  
  
One night, during finals week, he sits up in bed at three, grabs up his blankets and tramps down the stairs to the living room, falls asleep on the couch.  
  
Jared hides it well, though. That's something he learns: that you can buzz through life on caffeine and activity. Serge takes the seat next to him on the bus when they're coming back from an away game, asks if he has a partner for the policy debate next month; Jared shakes his head, seizes the opportunity. Jared sees a lot more of Brad, too, these days, every spare plot of time staked out for his best friend.  
  
Jared goes with him to the recruiter in the city. He lingers, reading some literature while Brad sits in front of a desk; then, when it seems like the meeting might stretch out for a while, he goes to the diner down the street, orders a plate of hash browns.  
  
It's the first quiet moment he's let himself have in a while. It's getting dark, and Jared can feel how chilly it is outside, the window glass at his elbow gasping with cold.  
  
Maybe he had needed Jensen, then. He hadn't been going through an especially hard time, really, at the beginning of the year, but it also hadn't been the golden age of his self-confidence.  
  
Jared's not sure. He takes a mouthful of potatoes.  
  
The bells above the door jingle, and when Jared looks over his shoulder to see, it's Brad. He waves him over, and Brad sits across from him, orders a cup of coffee.  
  
"Since when do you drink coffee?" Jared asks.  
  
Brad pulls off his gloves, wiggles his red fingers. "My hands are cold. You can spot me, right?"  
  
Jared snorts, takes a long sip of his water. "How'd it go?"  
  
Brad nods, looks around the diner, taking it in. "I don't know. Pretty good." He shrugs. "I have to talk to my mom about it."  
  
Jared makes an affirmative noise. He shifts in his seat, the vinyl squeaking, folds over the edge of his napkin absentmindedly with one hand.  
  
"Hey," Brad says.  
  
Jared looks up, and Brad has this face on that Jared's never seen. Like they'd already turned him stoic.  
  
"Are you okay?"  
  
Jared laughs. "Yeah. What are you talking about?"  
  
Brad looks down at the table, sucks his teeth. "Dude, come on," he says.  
  
****  
  
But really, what could Jared have told him?  
  
****  
  
Lisa starts to date this guy from UT, and Jared says to her in Econ, "Where did you even meet this guy?" and she says, "Katie," and laughs and puts a hand on his arm.  
  
Brad starts to date Katie, and Jared gives him full permission to be in absentia--expects it, even--but Brad's still around as much as he'd been before. Maybe more.  
  
Jared apologizes to Katie on Brad's behalf, trying to justify Brad's neglect, and she squints at him for a while before saying, "Okay."  
  
"He doesn't really know what having a girlfriend is all about. I mean, you're his first one."  
  
"Okay," she says.  
  
"He really likes you," Jared says. He checks his phone, quick. He's going to be late for practice. "Really likes you."  
  
She sighs, pulls her hair down over one shoulder. "I don't--" she starts. "I don't mean to be harsh, okay, Jared? Because, I do, I like you, and you're Brad's best friend. But please." She wraps her fingers around his wrist. "Stop worrying him soon. Okay?"  
  
****  
  
Saturday, at the car wash, Jared polishes up the windshield of a Mustang and says, "Brad, I'm totally fucking fine. The hump, I'm over it," and when the Mustang's owner heads over--this douche that looks the way Jared pictures Lisa's boyfriend to--Jared grins, tosses the keys over in a perfect arc, says, "Seriously, man? The car's fucking beautiful," and pockets the generous tip.  
  
"Bitch," Brad says, laughing. "Half of that's mine."  
  
It's a solid start, and Jared keeps it up. Calls Serge, asks for a ride out to Ikea in his truck. "I don't know, man," Serge says, "Sounds fucking boring."  
  
"I'll pay for gas," Jared says. "You're gonna need some shit, too, dude, for school next year. How the fuck are you gonna get laid without a _shower caddy_?"  
  
The trip turns out to be pretty fun. Serge goes blasting down the highway, pushing the truck past 100, rolls down the window and howls. It's strange. But Jared just tests his seatbelt, then howls, too.  
  
They pick up boxes of ready-to-assemble furniture in the warehouse, and Serge challenges him to a deadlifting contest. Jared's pressing a boxed bookcase above his head when he loses control. It goes slamming onto the concrete floor, and Serge goes, "Oh shit," then sprints away and around the corner, and Jared shakes the shock, races after him, swallowing laughter.  
  
Serge buys these lingonberry cookies on the way out, last minute. They pass the box back and forth on the drive home, crumbs spilling across Jared's lap. It takes a couple hours this time, because of the furniture in the truck bed. Because Serge takes the road at 75, teaching Jared to swear in Russian.  
  
"You've got a good smile," Serge says.  
  
****  
  
Brad comes over. "Katie's shopping at the outlets with her mom," he says when Jared opens the door.  
  
When they get up to Jared's room, Brad kicks the sleeping bag rolled out in front of the closet, asks, "Why the fuck are you sleeping on the floor?" then jumps onto Jared's bed. "So how's the boyfriend?"  
  
Jared's on his knees, rolling up the sleeping bag. "What?"  
  
"Every time I fucking call, you're out with Serge. I'm assuming that's because you're his bitch, now."  
  
Jared tugs the ties around the rolled up bag. He sits up. "What if," he says, carefully, "what if I was?"  
  
Brad's digging his hand down where the mattress meets the wall, looking for the TV remote. "Ah, the cocksucker tells all," he says.  
  
"Fuck you," Jared says, and gets up to go to the bathroom.  
  
When he comes back, Brad's sitting in Jared's desk chair, his hands linked over his stomach. "Dude," he asks. "Are you gay?"  
  
"Fuck off," Jared says. He's scared. "Maybe," he says.  
  
Brad stands up, and Jared can see him nervous, in the way he rocks. He cracks his knuckles, then does this strange shamble over to Jared. He takes a deep breath, then hugs Jared. He pats Jared's back, too hard. He drops his arms. "Can you be cool, now?" he asks.  
  
Jared lets out a long 'o' of an exhale. Smiles, shaky. "Brad--" he says.  
  
Brad flips him the bird, falls back onto Jared's bed. "So, what, are we still allowed to hang out in here with your bedroom door closed? Or is that not a good idea," he jokes.  
  
****  
  
Jared and Serge lose the big policy debate. Resolved: Speech and debate should find judges who are able to be unbiased, free of slants toward schools, preparatory though they may be.  
  
Still, it's a good time, and Jared gets a pretty solid idea for a humorous interp for the next go.  
  
He's playing water polo for a club, and Brad comes out to a game with Katie. When they win, Jared heaves himself up out of the water to talk to them, and Serge shuffles past--"I'm not running!" he yells in Coach's direction--and slaps Jared's ass.  
  
"You get him drunk," Brad says, "and that could happen. I'm 100%."  
  
"Please," Katie says. "One beer."  
  
Jared ruffles his wet hair with both hands, sends water flying at the pair of them. He grins, claps his hands. "So, it's my birthday next week," he declares.  
  
****  
  
They go out to dinner, him and Brad and Katie and Serge and Lisa. Serge dresses up pretty nice, down to the slacks and shiny shoes, and when Jared laughs at him, Serge just adjusts his collar, says, "It's a special event."  
  
Lisa sits down next to Jared, and after everyone's settled and studying the menus, he leans over and says, "You could have brought your boyfriend."  
  
She just laughs, flips the pages of her menu. "What am I supposed to order at a steakhouse, Padalecki?"  
  
When the waitress shows up to take their order, Brad stands up and says, "Wait," beckons her closer, whispering loudly, "It's his birthday!" pointing at Jared.  
  
She aims a pretty smile at Jared. "Is that so?"  
  
Jared blushes, nods. "Yes, ma'am."  
  
Brad sits back down, looking pleased. "Tell her how old you're turning, JT, go on." He holds up a hand. "He's turning twenty-one!"  
  
"Is that so?" she asks again.  
  
Jared stares at Brad, shaking his head, smirking all the while.  
  
"A round of celebratory drinks!" Brad declares. "The baby of the group's finally of legal drinking age."  
  
The waitress laughs, raises an eyebrow. "I'm going to need to see some I.D.," she says.  
  
"Oh, come on," Katie says, then squints at the waitress' name tag. "Becky, it's his birthday. Look at his pretty little twenty-one year-old face."  
  
"Wow," Serge says.  
  
Jared sighs, smiles up at Becky apologetically. "I'm sorry. They're a little riled up."  
  
Lisa pats the back of Jared's hand. "Oh, JT. The perennial boy scout."  
  
Becky tucks her pad back into her pocket. "I can bring the birthday boy cake," she says, her hand resting on the back of Jared's chair.  
  
"To Becky!" Brad raises his water glass.  
  
****  
  
After dinner, they drive out to the elementary school Jared went to with Brad. They climb over the fence surrounding the field; Jared gives Katie a boost, studiously looking anywhere but up. She's wearing a skirt, and Brad whistles when he helps her down on the other side.  
  
Serge goes sprinting across the grass, so far down he disappears into the blue of night. Lisa and Katie are arm in arm in front of him, and Brad's at his side, and when Brad stops, Jared stops, too, putting his hands in his pockets while Brad lights a joint.  
  
When they start walking again, Jared says, "So I stopped dreaming about that guy."  
  
Brad blows smoke, a steady stream. "The guy in your closet?" he asks.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
The moon's a clipping in the sky. "When?"  
  
Jared shrugs.  
  
His shoes are getting wet with dew, the smell of pot sweet and heavy.  
  
"You know," Jared says. "I'm not sure he was a dream," but before Brad can reply, the girls break into a noisy run; Serge is dead ahead, on the playground, a shadow swinging, up, up, toward a low-hanging, starless sky.  
  
He howls and Jared answers. He just throws back his head.  
  
****  
  
Jared gets this really great birthday present.  
  
He'd started writing a letter when he got home. Tired, scraping at his eyes. Something he could slide under the door.  
  
He remembers hearing, "Boo."  
  
He remembers Jensen, shoulders tilting--like his left side was weighed down--eyes wide and blinking.  
  
He remembers the way Jensen lifted his arms, slowly, to hug Jared back.  
  
He remembers the rush of adrenaline, and the way it didn't leave, the way it bubbled up when Jensen said he should go, a low-grade hum the whole time they blasted through Call of Duty, every round an incentive for Jensen to stay.  
  
He remembers saying, "You're going to come back, right?" and Jensen's nod.  
  
Everything else is a blur.  
  
****  
  
He wakes up feeling off, again. He thought it'd be better. It should have been better.  
  
"What's wrong with you?" Lisa asks during class, and Jared, he can't say he's scared, because then she'll ask, 'Of what?', and _it's the same old song and dance all over again_.  
  
Brad collides into him when he's on the way to fourth period, pushes him into the lockers, and asks with his hand on Jared's chest, "You can tell when a dream's a dream, right?"  
  
"Yes," Jared says, but he has his doubts.  
  
Brad squints at him for while, then nods. "I'm enlisting," he says. That's bomb one.  
  
On his way out of school, at the end of the day, he walks past Serge, flirting with this sophomore on the song team, and Serge whistles for him, beckons with a tilt of his head.  
  
Jared raises a hand. "I gotta go.”  
  
Serge squints at him. "I got into Brown," he calls back. He looks more Russian every day, Jared thinks, his blond hair almost white.  
  
When he gets home, he makes himself a sandwich, eats it while he makes his bed, and shoves his dirty socks and boxers into the hamper in his closet. He thinks about hanging a bell off the doorknob. He finishes that paper he has due tomorrow. He watches two Godfather movies, and goes downstairs for dinner, takes out the trash, helps wash the dishes.  
  
Jared could probably solve the problem of world hunger, he has so much time.  
  
When Jensen shows up, Jared only just keeps from hugging him again. He smiles, and then Jensen says, "Hey, we should probably talk," and then says, "Maybe you could sit. If you wanted to," so Jared does and Jensen drops bomb two.  
  
****  
  
"So anyway, I like you," Jensen says.  
  
He uses the word _'love'_.  
  
"Could I have some time?" Jared says. Jensen's face kind of breaks Jared's heart, but--  
  
That door. Every night Jensen closes it behind him, and he does it tonight, too. Even after all that, just leaves Jared waiting for him to come back.  
  
****  
  
Jensen had given Jared plenty of time. Enough for Jared to remember what it had been like to wait for that closet door to open. Enough to have made Lisa say, "Jesus, are you back to being a mopey bitch again?"  
  
When Jensen finally showed up, hat in hand, excuses flying, Jared made sure to lock down details, a day and time for their first date. "The shitty thing is," Jared said, "you don't have a phone."  
  
Jensen smirked, really relaxed for what seemed like the first time in a while. "Can you imagine if I did? Bitch, that cell would be blowin' up."  
  
They're on for later tonight so Jared only half listens when Serge invites him out with the rest of the team after the game. "I can't," Jared says, pulling on a sweater in the locker room. "I'm meeting this guy."  
  
Serge slams his locker closed. "Are you gay?"  
  
"Don't beat me up," Jared says, throwing his arms in front of his face, and Serge snorts, says, "Fuck you."  
  
Jared could make it more than a joke. Put a hand on Serge's shoulder and ask, "Would it be the worst fucking thing in the world?" But why make waves.  
  
They head out into the night. Serge is talking about Brown, and leaving town and Jared makes noise where he's supposed to, claps hands with Serge when they separate to go to their respective cars. He's running early, actually; Jensen had promised to meet Jared at the address Jared had supplied at nine. Jared's not totally sure how Jensen's going to get there, but it's one of those things he's not supposed to press Jensen on, like Sully, or why Jensen hates the North Pole.  
  
He leans against his car, takes a good look at the rec center. The glass walls around the pool going opaque as the lights snap off. Clouds, and wind, and a ringed moon promising rain.  
  
For a split second, Jared thinks he sees eyes blinking at him from somewhere in the leaves of the tree closest to him.  
  
He takes deep breaths, crosses his arms against the cold. This place: it could have been covered in ice at a time. Snow packed so tight it gleamed. And before that, ooze. Bubbling sludge and steam.  
  
The ground beneath his feet is floating on liquid rock. And…there could be yetis. There could be ghosts. All kinds of things, hiding in the corners and shadows.  
  
****  
  
Jensen's already at the restaurant when Jared gets there. He's got a table against the wall, right under a curling poster of white walls and blue ocean: BEAUTIFUL SANTORINI.  
  
"Nice place," Jensen says, and Jared laughs. He puts his hands in his pockets and takes the small space in all over again: fluorescent lighting, chipped tile, the overhead menu.  
  
"Nothing but the best," Jared says, and Jensen grins, stands up. The two of them look at each other for a while, then Jared laughs again, wipes his palms on his jeans. "Do we go for a shake here, or?"  
  
Jensen smiles. "We could do a hearty man-hug. Backslaps."  
  
"Let's try that," and Jared leans in, puts his arms around Jensen's torso. Gives him a quick squeeze, nose dipping to brush against Jensen's ear.  
  
Jensen doesn't meet his eyes when they let go. He puts his hands in his pockets, half-turns toward the cashier. "Should we order?" He glances over at Jared, smirks before adding, "You blush. That's sweet."  
  
Jared smiles big at the cashier. "Yeah, I'll have the super-gyro. Extra onions. And extra tzatziki. Go ahead and make the whole thing as messy as possible. Just terrible."  
  
****  
  
When they sit down, Jared says, “It’s weird. I was starting to think you were only real inside my bedroom, you know? But here you are.”  
  
Jensen leans back in his chair, hands hanging on to the side of the table. “I know what you mean.”  
  
Mostly it goes well, after that, until Jensen asks Jared where he's going to school in the fall.  
  
"Austin, probably," Jared says.  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
Jared nods, wipes some sauce from the corner of his mouth with his thumb. "Yup. Looked over the dorms last week with Lisa. I think I could see myself there."  
  
"You want to live in the dorms?" Jensen asks.  
  
"Were you planning on moving me into your nonexistent apartment?" Jared jokes.  
  
Jensen studies him from across the table. He leans back in his chair. "I'll have to live somewhere if I leave Monstropolis."  
  
"Leave? Come on, Monstropolis is your home," Jared says and it comes out balder than Jared had intended. It feels like more than he’d wanted to say, and he’s not sure he wants to stand behind it, so he drops his eyes, drags a french fry through some ketchup, asks, "What movie do you want to see tonight?"  
  
It takes Jensen a while to answer. "Something short," he says.  
  
****  
  
"If someone relocates to be with you, that's a big deal, right?" Jared asks Lisa.  
  
"Jesus," Lisa says. She flips through the history textbook lazily. "I told you not to message that chick in Romania. Eastern Europe does not mess around."  
  
"Message not received," Jared says.  
  
She slaps the book closed, looks at Jared, chin on her palm. "I'm dating Joe College again," she says, her voice challenging.  
  
****  
  
"If someone moves to be closer to you--"  
  
Serge holds up a hand. "Stop there."  
  
"I'm not allowed to pick your Brown-attending brain?"  
  
"I've already heard about the poll you're taking. We're eighteen. Unless you're filming a reality show for MTV, don't get married."  
  
"I'm not getting married," Jared says.  
  
Serge rolls his eyes. "Aren't you?" he asks. "Mail-order brides are for losers."  
  
****  
  
"If someone moves to be with you," Jared starts.  
  
"Who are we talking about?" Brad asks. "Are you seriously carrying on some fucked-up online romance behind my back?"  
  
"No," Jared says. "It's hypothetical."  
  
"Why the sudden curiosity about the stratagems behind dating?" Katie asks. "Jesus, graduation practice could not be more boring," she adds, squinting down at the vice principal yelling up into the bleachers.  
  
"It's my brother," Jared says. He digs under his fingernails.  
  
"Jeff's got a girlfriend?" Brad asks.  
  
"Yeah," Jared says. "They met at an away game. And now she's thinking about transferring schools for him."  
  
"Jesus," Brad says. "Seems kind of fast, don't you think?"  
  
Katie pulls her hair off her neck, twists it up into a knot that she holds to the back of her head. "I don't."  
  
Brad sighs, taps Jared's side with his elbow, looking for back-up."You've gotta be at least late-twenties before you lock yourself down," he says, not looking at Katie.  
  
Katie lets out a short, annoyed laugh. "Wow. That's interesting."  
  
Jared leans away, shades his eyes with one hand to get a better look at nothing.  
  
"Fuck, Katie," Brad says.  
  
“What?” she says.  
  
"You're too goddamn smart to want to be an army wife, right? Tell me you're at least that smart."  
  
"Shut the fuck up, okay, Brad?"  
  
Jared stretches, shifts a few inches away. "Oh, man," he says to himself. "My back aches."  
  
"We're teenagers!" Brad says.  
  
Katie glares at him. "Does it matter? Whatever. I hear you loud and clear."  
  
****  
  
Here's this one thing: Jensen cops this attitude, this sort of embarrassed shiftiness that's simultaneously hilarious and flattering, where he just looks Jared up and _down_.  
  
Jared can't help it. He thinks of Brad, the way he says at the beginning of every new year, "Damn, every year the freshman get fresher."  
  
"Skeeze," Jared says to Jensen, grinning.  
  
****  
  
For their fifth date, Jensen comes to one of Jared's water polo games.  
  
At the end, Jared drags himself out of the water, worn out, and catches the towel Serge tosses at him. He walks over to Jensen, drying off, says, "So?"  
  
Jensen stares up at the ceiling, hands behind his back. "You look good out there."  
  
Jared laughs. "You can ogle me if you want."  
  
Jensen snorts. He meets Jared's eyes deliberately, raises a brow. "Where are all your friends?"  
  
Jared shrugs. "They don't always come out."  
  
"Ah," Jensen says. "Imaginary friends aren’t the most reliable. Monsters, Inc. might be acquiring that contingent, I can give them a talking to."  
  
"Smart mouth."  
  
Jensen dips his head, modest.  
  
Jared laughs, heads to the locker room.  
  
"You still in the mood for milkshakes?" Jensen calls after him.  
  
"Yep," Jared says. He turns, walks backwards. "And for the record, my imaginary friend was a T-Rex. Little arms, big teeth. Be on the lookout."  
  
****  
  
They walk through the drive-thru at Jack in the Box. Jensen's lifted his straw out, sucking an Oreo chunk out from the bottom of it, clearing the blockage. He catches Jared looking at him, holds the shake out. "You want some?" he asks.  
  
"No, I'm good," Jared says.  
  
"Are you sure?" He's still offering it over. He's wearing that blue sweater Jared likes. The one that sheds everywhere, flyaway threads.  
  
"Can I just say something?"  
  
Jensen nods. "Shoot. If you're complimenting me, start with my hair. I've got good hair."  
  
Jared smiles. "I still feel bad about our shitty first date." He looks down, kicks at the crumbling asphalt of the parking lot. "I hope you know—I mean, you're important to me. Okay? I don't want to keep my distance from you."  
  
"Are you sure?" Jensen's voice is quiet.  
  
Jared looks at him. "Yeah. I just got...you know. Freaked out."  
  
Jensen nods. "Okay." He lets out a slow, shaky exhale. He shakes his head, smiling carefully. "You hold all the cards. You know that, right? I laid out everything I've got."  
  
"I hear you." Jared wraps his fingers in Jensen's sweater, the soft fur of it. "We can move in if you want," he jokes.  
  
Jensen huffs out a laugh.  
  
"What? Too fast?" Jared grins. "You think I'm loose, don't you?"  
  
"It's in the swing of your hips," Jensen says.  
  
****  
  
Jared thinks that night is probably why, when Jensen's note comes flying under his door, it's easy to write 'Stay'.  
  
He paces the room until morning, thanks God that it's a weekend and calls in sick to work, lets all his phone calls go to voicemail.  
  
He'd tear out the pages of every one of his books if that would make time go faster. He'd rip the door off its hinges.  
  
When the door does finally swing open, Jared jumps to his feet, the blood rushing into his hands hanging heavy at his sides. He feels like he could throw up a few times. Jensen's face is pale, his shoulders an unbroken bar, and when he spins back to toss the door open again before less than a second’s passed, Jared's stomach sinks at how quickly he'd changed his mind.  
  
There's nothing to go back to, though. Just hangers.  
  
"Are you okay?" Jared asks, and when Jensen comes to him, he holds Jensen tight, tells him it's not a pussy move if he wants to cry.  
  
****  
  
Jensen gets an apartment out in Austin, drives back to see Jared on the weekends. Jared had made Brad help them move Jensen in, and while the two of them were carrying Jensen’s couch, Brad asked, "Is this guy legit?"  
  
He looked so serious that Jared stifled his chuckle as they carefully lowered the couch. Nodded. "He's good."  
  
“Alright.” Brad sighed, crossed his arms over his chest. "I'm in South Carolina the day after graduation."  
  
Jared put a hand high on Brad's arm, squeezed. "I know," he said.  
  
"Katie broke up with me."  
  
"I know that, too," and when Jared hugged him, Brad squeezed back, hard.  
  
Brad went downstairs to feed the meter just as Jensen came through the door with a lamp under his arm, and Jared turned to Jensen, wiping at his eyes.  
  
"It's dusty in here," Jensen said.  
  
Jared smiled, shoved his hands deep into his pockets. He looked around the studio. "You didn't bring back much stuff," he said.  
  
"Yeah," Jensen said. He looked around the studio, too. "I wasn't allowed to. I wasn't supposed to," he amends.  
  
****  
  
Jensen comes to the graduation party. Jared introduces him to Serge, but Jensen needs to use the bathroom so he goes looking pretty quick.  
  
"Who was that?" Serge asks. "Cousin?"  
  
"No, dude," Jared says, and Serge takes the measure of him, then purses his lips, says, "I'm gonna get another beer."  
  
Jared can't think about that right now, so he scans the room for familiar faces. Brad's home packing, so Katie's shown up, and she waves at Jared from across the room but doesn't come too close.  
  
"She's licking her wounds," Lisa says, appearing at Jared's side.  
  
Jared smiles huge at her, wraps her up in his arms, lifts her off her feet. "Congratulations, graduate," he says.  
  
"You, too." Her smile back at him is a little forced. "Serge says you brought a guy."  
  
"Yeah? He’s not wrong." Jared swallows. "I did."  
  
She looks at his chest, bites at her cheek before saying, "So…did you know? That I had a thing for you?"  
  
"Lisa," Jared says. Fuck. He reaches for her, but she shrugs him off.  
  
She runs a hand through her hair. "You could have spared me a little heartbreak is all." She laughs, then looks away, rolling her eyes at herself.  
  
****  
  
He gets really drunk that night. Upstairs, in Cathy de la Cruz's bathroom, Jared throws up into the toilet. He's gargling when he says to his reflection, "Shit. I have no fucking friends."  
  
"You have me," Rex says, dinosaur teeth snapping, and Jared groans, throws up again. He’s pushing the limits of his inebriation.  
  
Jensen bursts in then. He grimaces, then reaches for Jared, guides him back to the sink. "There goes my sexual attraction to you," he says.  
  
Jared wipes his mouth with a hand towel. "Hang on," he says, "I'll put on my Speedo."  
  
****  
  
College is as awesome as it is insane. Jared's learned to roll with the punches, but there's so much shit going on that he feels like he's buffeted from all sides, careening from classroom to house party to intramural sports without time to breathe.  
  
Here's his favorite thing. If he had to pin it down to one:  
  
It's a big campus--Jared knows from walking from the dorms to his bio lab--but there have been a few times already, where he's come across Jensen. Unplanned, without all the frustration of looking for overlapping space in their schedules.  
  
Like once, Jared was coming out of the gym and Jensen was sitting at a table next to the sandwich cart outside, book in hand, legs crossed at the ankles. And another time, Jensen walked out of the bookstore with his backpack slung over his shoulder, talking to someone who had to be a professor, right when Jared looked up from locking his bike. And this other time, Jensen was lying on the grass, head pillowed on his arms, dark sunglasses over his eyes, iPod buds in his ears.  
  
Every time, Jared would jog over, press a kiss to Jensen's cheek, and Jensen would startle, then grin. "Dude," he'd say. "Warn a guy," but he'd still look really happy to see Jared.  
  
Jared thinks it's nice to know that they live in a world where that's possible. It's almost a relief, to catch sight of him; to know out of sight doesn't mean gone.  
  
That's probably his favorite thing. Who knows how many more times it'll happen.  
  
****  
  
Admittedly, college is more than Jared had expected. More everything. He makes a lot of new friends--the dorms are designed for it--and Jensen keeps busy, too, catching up with credits, going out for drinks with the grad students in his department.  
  
Jared's juggling shit pretty well, he thinks. Sure he's lost his dorm room key more than a few times already, and he's hanging by a thread in Peterson's class, but those are reparable problems. And he's only come back to his dorm room to find Jensen waiting for a meet-up he'd forgotten twice.  
  
The second time had been the opposite of great. Jensen stood up, scrubbed his hands through his hair, and said, "Fuck, Jared."  
  
"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," Jared said.  
  
"I hate feeling like a chick stood up for her prom, dude."  
  
Jared sighed. "I mean, getting burritos isn't exactly prom. Less dancing for one. More beans for another."  
  
Jensen grabbed his book bag, pulled it over his shoulder. Pressed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. "It's just a lot," he said, before walking out.  
  
It's a really stupid event. "You can't really call it a fight," Jared insists the next morning, licking frosting off his fingers at Jensen's apartment, his offering of apology-donuts accepted.  
  
****  
  
Jared gets drunk quite a bit in college. Here's a thing he learns about having many, many beers: sometimes you see things.  
  
For example, long-ago imaginary friends named Rex.  
  
****  
  
Jared goes back home for a weekend because Brad had called, told him he’d be in San Antonio, visiting his folks. Jensen calls while Jared’s driving, but Jared doesn’t stay on the line too long. He likes to keep both hands on the wheel.  
  
It's nice, and strange to be home. The town feels depleted of familiar faces. Brad picks him up and they drive by the car wash. Brad gets his Buick hosed down for free, helps Jared nick a washcloth.  
  
They go back to the elementary school one night, compete to see who can swing the highest. Brad wins, and when he's done crowing about it, Jared asks, "Do you ever talk to Katie?"  
  
Brad takes a drag off his cigarette. "Nope. Serge called me, a couple weeks back."  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"You two fight or something?"  
  
Jared shakes his head. "Not really. He texted me on his birthday." Jared sighs. "Hey. Did Jensen seem off to you the last time you were in Austin?  
  
“I don’t really know the guy.”  
  
“I guess.” Jared drags his feet across the sand, leaving long, swooping lines.  
  
"You like him a lot," Brad says.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"What I’m saying is…" Brad shrugs. "You keep acting like that's where it stops."  
  
Jared snaps his head up, meets Brad’s eyes. "Fuck you."  
  
Brad drops the cigarette into the sand below him, stamps it out with his foot. "Jesus," he says. "Let's get out of here."  
  
****  
  
The next morning, Jared wakes up to this: "Morning, sailor."  
  
When he opens his eyes, he sees Rex, little arms raised, at the foot of his bed.  
  
"Surprise," Rex says. "I'm more than a figment of your childhood imagination. Are you shocked?"  
  
Jared groans, let his eyes close again. "There were clues." It never lets up. As if Jared needs one more thing just real enough to doubt.  
  
****  
  
He goes home again for his mom's birthday, and when Rex shows up in his bedroom, he hands him another letter. "I don't get why they need a middleman to keep tabs on their boy," Jared says.  
  
"Imaginary Friends Ltd. is newly under their management. I don't get my pick of the litter in terms of assignments."  
  
"If your bosses want to know what Jensen's up to so bad, they should open a door. How hard is that?"  
  
Rex looks up. "You don't get what it means to leave Monstropolis, do you?" Jared raises an eyebrow and Rex shakes his head. "You got taller, but I'm not sure you got much smarter since you were six."  
  
Jared frowns. "I remember you being lovable.”  
  
"Jensen's out for good," Rex says. "The CDA go whole hog, all ties severed, banished the way Communist Russia used to do it. It's a risk that I'm even ferrying letters, and the only reason they can do that is because of all the degrees of separation. That plus the fact that things are still up in the air with the merger. It’s not just Sully running himself into the ground finding a place for all our people."  
  
It makes so much sense. Those were answers to questions Jared probably should have already asked, conclusions he should have drawn. "So there's no going back." A dawning in Jared’s chest; untamed, rustling things going calm at its warm touch.  
  
Rex snorts. "Hope you're worth it."  
  
****  
  
Jared drives back to Austin the next morning, finds Jensen in the shower. He can't stop looking at him.  
  
Jared tells him, “I love you.” He says it because he’s sure. The two of them under a sun that will burn for billions of years longer.  
  
****  
  
In bed, Jared pulls the covers over both their heads, kisses Jensen. Jensen groans against Jared’s lips, tries to pull the blankets back down. "I can't breathe," he says.  
  
Jared laughs, tugs the comforter down so Jensen is free, but he stays under, presses his ear to Jensen's heart. "Hey," he says. "Do you miss home? Do you miss them?"  
  
Jensen goes stiff. His heart beating steady.  
  
"You don't have to talk about it," Jared says.  
  
Jensen sighs, a hand curling around Jared's neck. "I didn't--" he starts. "I didn't think it would be so permanent, losing them."  
  
Jared holds his hand.  
  
"Sully's getting really old," Jensen says. "And I left him in a lurch." He squeezes Jared's fingers. "There was capitalist heartlessness to attend to. Guilds, and suits." His laugh drifts off. "I wonder a lot. If he's okay."  
  
"I bet he is," Jared says.  
  
"Everything happened so damn fast. I hope he wasn't too sad," Jensen says. He takes in a ragged breath. "When I left."  
  
Jared shoves the comforter aside, comes up for air. He turns Jensen's face to him, slides his lips across Jensen's.  
  
Let everybody love you, Jared thinks, but let me love you best.  
  
****  
  
"I just asked him to come home with me," Jared tells his sister over dinner.  
  
"After telling me I had no better options," Jensen says.  
  
Jared chews with his mouth open. "It was a very sweet and tender invitation," he agrees.  
  
****  
  
Jensen falls asleep exhausted, late that night. Jared doesn't blame him. When Jensen had thrown open the closet door, Jared had hoped, you know? Hoped, that Rex had delivered his letter and that it had gotten through. That the time and date wouldn't be ignored. That the rules might bend just once, for Jensen to have another chance to see Sully, and Mike, and home.  
  
But Jensen turned back around, framed by the junk in Jared's closet; and even bracing himself, Jared faltered a little at the look on Jensen's face. The dented smile.  
  
"I'm an idiot," Jensen had said, and Jared had said, "If you're an idiot, so am I," without thinking. Came up with something just off the truth: "I shove a letter under that door every time I come home."  
  
"Yeah?" Jensen laughed. "Saying what?"  
  
"Just some stuff." He’d smiled up at Jensen’s abruptly serious face, sad and fond. He wanted to fix the places Jensen had cracked, felt helpless to do it.  
  
But Jensen hadn't stopped looking at him, and Jared squirmed under his gaze, confused at the growing warmth of it. He'd half gotten up, drawn to the light on Jensen's face, when Jensen tackled him onto the bed, called, "Of all the doors."  
  
Whatever that meant, but Jared smiled, touched Jensen's face, and when Jensen asked him if he was scared, he was. That feeling, deep in every crevice, in his tips and peaks.  
  
****  
  
The closet door opens, and Jared's eyes snap open with it. Jensen is dead to the world, and when Jared glances out the window, he sees the sky gray and hazy with beginning light.  
  
When Jared sees who it is, he sighs. "So they said no?"  
  
Rex taps his claws together, sad and anxious. "The CDA's strict. There was no way they were going to let things slide."  
  
Jared nods. "I know." He swallows. "You warned me."  
  
"That said--" Rex begins.  
  
"That said," a voice says from behind him. "What they don’t know won’t hurt them. You'll understand why this should probably remain our little secret." A monster! This blue and purple beast with horns, and teeth, and eyes.  
  
Sully grips the doorjamb with one paw, stretches to look past Rex. Those eyes warm and shining as he stares at the pile under the covers next to Jared, whispers, "Is that Jensen?"  
  
Jared nods, turns to look down at him. He puts a hand on Jensen's cheek. "Jensen," he says.  
  
He’ll be really happy, Jared thinks, clearing the damp from his throat. "Jensen, _wake up_."  
  
****  
  
One last thing.  
  
Jared, this one afternoon, he got high, crazy high, soaring on bud, and he was sprawled across a couch in Jensen's apartment, and Jensen burst out of the bathroom, bouncing a little as he zipped up his fly.  
  
Jensen frowned at the reek in the room, but he came over to Jared, lifted Jared's head up and sat so Jared could lie back in Jensen's lap.  
  
"I've been thinking," Jared said.  
  
Jensen laughed. "Hm. And smoking. Can you see God in the coils of my energy-efficient light bulbs?"  
  
"Not today."  
  
Jensen rubbed a finger along Jared's left eyebrow. "Is Rex around?"  
  
"No," Jared said.  
  
"Alright, well. I'm ready. Your drug-fueled philosophy," Jensen said. "Lay it on me."  
  
But it was hard to put into words.  
  
Like. Yesterday, Jared overheard some frat dudes playing 'I Never', and one guy said, "I've never fucked a redhead," and Jared thought of Lisa without meaning to. She just sprang up in his mind. She didn't even have red hair.  
  
And sometimes he'll look at Jensen and think, ‘I know your happiest face’. All the smiles Jensen had carried coalescing into one nova of light as he said, "Sully, this is Jared."  
  
And while Jensen was in the bathroom, Jared got a text from Serge, and it said, "shit, time flies," but Jared doesn't think it does, you know? It's just enough to keep pace with, to find new ways to save the things you want to keep.  
  
"Well?" Jensen asks, drawing rings on Jared's skin with his thumb.  
  
Jared sighs. "It's nothing." He turns his face into Jensen's stomach, puts a hand just inside Jensen's shirt. "I'm going to buy you a blue sweater," he says.  
  
 **The end.**


End file.
